What an absolute piece of dogshit officiating in LA tonight where the feel good Clippers defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder by a final margin of 118-110.
I’m pretty sure this is the first time this season I’ve even mentioned officiating one way or another. I’ve harped on Billy Donovan being the Ward Cleaver of NBA coaches. I’ve harped about Little Nick Gallo being the obvious successor to Sarah Huckabee- Sanders in the Trump White House. And, of course, pretty much every game I bitch about the Thunder being one of the league’s underachievers for the second straight season…only this time without Carmelo Anthony.
But tonight I m going to talk about officiating…as in this was the worst I’ve seen this season in an NBA game. Let’s put aside the fact the Clippers were 26-34 from the line while the Thunder were 17-26. That doesn’t even bother me because on the second night of a brutal road back to back I expected the Thunder starters to be tired and probably not moving their feet at times in the game. They were tired and their feet didn’t move at times.
But here’s the thing on this night when Westbrook, George, and Adams all fouled out–the sixth fouls on both Paul George and Russell Westbrook were absolute bullshit calls. I’m a tough critic on my blog at times on the Thunder, but again I feel I need to be given the fact Big 12 writers and college writers who cover this team in this market aren’t exactly what I would describe as shall we say… experience tested objective.
When I coached hockey I stood up for my players and if this was my team tonight in LA I would have been ejected after the sixth foul calls on either Paul George or Russell Westbrook. I might even be in jail right now. For sure…I’d be getting a heavy fine at the least. Both calls were horrific and basically negated any chance in the last three minutes for the Thunder to steal a road win on the second night of a difficult back to back.
As far as the game went…OKC was a Vegas 2.5 underdog and rightfully so. The Thunder aren’t as good as we hoped they’d turn out to be and the gritty Clippers are along with Denver and Indiana one of the genuinely feel good stories in the NBA this season. I admire the effort and grit this Clippers team has shown NBA fans all season long and I applaud their team character and grit.
But still, those two calls were absolute bullshit.
Before I close out…I thought the Thunder bench showed some fight in the third period and that’s a positive. Markieff Morris appears to be rounding into some sort of reasonable basketball shape and that’s a positive. I love grinders…and Abdel Nader is winning my heart with his ‘grindiness’. If the Thunder were smart they’d have some sort of award called ‘The Collison’ which publicly recognizes the importance of your team grinder.
One more game left on this brutal western road swing and that one is on Monday evening in Salt Lake City where the Jazz and their fans very much realize this is a line in the sand game for their season if they want to climb into the fifth or fourth seed in the West by season’s end. It will be a war. It will be like in Portland with the playoff-like setting.
I’d guess OKC will be a 4 to 4.5 Vegas road underdog.
I can’t wait for these type of games. This is why you either play or coach sports. You want to compete.
The Thunder need to compete on Monday and maybe get a little love from the zebras as well.