James Harden On Ref Scott Foster: "He's Just Rude And Arrogant"

While I can admit I am a Harden guy given our time together at ASU, I have to say nothing he said in this interview was false. In fact, I don’t want to go the I told you so route, but everyone with a brain could see this coming. I made my case yesterday about how the NBA was clearly helping LeBron and the Lakers with their officiating assignment of Scott Foster and two other extremely home heavy refs, so I can’t say I’m all that surprised that when things got close, a certain official just so happened to make his presence felt

I know there are other reasons the Rockets lost this game, including them blowing their 19 point lead, but come on. We’ve had enough history with this team and Scott Foster to know something is up. He was on the crew in two of HOU’s losses to GS last postseason, and then again int heir only loss to the Jazz. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he was on the floor for Harden’s 7th career game in which he fouled out, considering he was also the ref the last time that happened in 2017. You can say this isn’t a personal beef all you want, but how can you just ignore the evidence?

What’s shocking is that immediately after the story came out about Tim Donaghy the other day, the NBA was so cocky that they put his #1 co-conspirator in this huge nationally televised game only to see him pull this type of shady shit. How is that a good look for a league that is already fighting the idea that things are fixed? I don’t know if it’s even possible, but for the sake of credibility and given the history between Foster and the Rockets, maybe they do have a point that he shouldn’t be assigned to their games. I’m pretty sure that’s not how things work but the league can’t exactly ignore this in my opinion. Especially when all Adam Silver does is talk about competitive balance. It’s pretty clear that when Foster does a Rockets game, things are not balanced. That’s not being salty that’s just a fact.

The idea that an official has a vendetta against a team isn’t all that new either. Joey Crawford used to do this shit all the time too back in the day whether it was against the Spurs or the Timberwolves, there’s certainly a history of it. That’s why I get what the Rockets are saying and I tend to agree with them if only because there is so much evidence supporting their claim. This is not a one time issue, stuff like this seems to happen every single time they play a game and Foster is on the crew, and I don’t know how the league can just straight up ignore it.

That is until you remember who its benefitted recently

Then it makes all the sense in the world.