The Los Angeles Lakers had a few things to say after their Game 2 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Both about the officials, and to their faces.
After the final buzzer sounded, Lakers star Austin Reaves was seen leading an airing of grievances with the officials on the court alongside his teammates. This is not something you see very often.
It had been a contentious game overall.
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The second half in particular saw the Lakers get incensed over several calls. At one point, LeBron James was heard shouting, “What the f*** are you talking about? You f***ing suck, man” at crew chief John Goble, per The Athletic’s Joel Lorenzi.
There was one jump ball in particular that set Reaves off, with several resets before play was started again.
Once the Lakers left the court, head coach JJ Redick spoke to reporters with similar frustration brewing. Among other things, he claimed that James has historically been short-changed on foul calls:
“LeBron has the worst whistle of any star player I’ve ever seen. I’ve been with him two years now. The smaller guys, because they can be theatric, they typically draw more fouls. And the bigger players that are built like LeBron, it’s hard for them.
“He got clobbered again tonight a bunch. That’s not a new thing, that’s not specific to this crew, this series. He gets fouled a lot and it doesn’t happen. Guy gets hit on the head more than any player I’ve seen on drives and it rarely gets called.
James, meanwhile, shrugged off the ref talk in the locker room, responding “I don’t know” when asked about his old podcasting partner’s comment.
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Redick called out multiple other areas of frustration:
“They have a few guys that foul on every possession, and all the good defenses do. [Shai Gilgeous-Alexander] gets a touch foul on a drive. There was a stretch where four straight possessions our guys got absolutely clobbered. Trying to make an entry pass to Jaxson [Hayes] and Jaylin Williams is grabbing his jersey with both arms.
“They’re are hard enough to play. You gotta be able to just call it if they foul and they do foul.”
Redick did go on to say, “We didn’t lose because of the refs. That’s never the case … Oklahoma City outplayed us.”
On a numbers basis, the Thunder received more free-throw attempts during the game, with 26 to the Lakers’ 21, and were called for fewer fouls, 21 to the Lakers’ 26. They also committed fewer turnovers (12 to 20) and got more rebounds (46 to 37) while posting their best field-goal percentage of the postseason (55.6%).
Regardless of how they got there, the Lakers are now down 0-2 in the Western Conference semifinals and 0-6 against the Thunder this season when including the regular season. Game 3 is scheduled for Saturday (8:30 p.m. ET, ABC) at Crypto.com Arena.
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We’ll see if the officials take any of those criticisms to heart.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
