Draymond Green Told The Unfortunate Truth When It Came To One Of The Biggest Plays In The Nuggets Loss
Everyone knows when you lose, it's a tough look to complain about the refs. At the same time, when your favorite team is the one that benefits from bad calls or no calls, suddenly the officiating isn't an issue. I always look at it like this. If some bullshit that goes down happened against your team instead of in favor of it, would you be upset about it? Of course. That's just the name of the game in the NBA.
For those who may have missed it, this is the play Draymond is talking about
Here's a clearer version as well of the play
If you're being honest, that's clearly a foul. A pretty big spot for a no call too because immediately after that play Rondo hit a jumper to make it a 5 point game, and then LeBron earned a trip to the line to make it a 7 point game with 2 minutes to play. In such a close game, that's a pretty big swing. The beauty of this is the NBA won't have to admit it because it came outside the last two minutes. It's a huge no call because you go from potentially being down only 1 to down 7. Maybe if it's a 1 point game you don't get that Monte Morris 3PA right before LeBron's foul. Who knows.
The thing is, Draymond is 100% correct as to why there wasn't a call there and I think that's where the frustration comes from. You shouldn't need to "earn it" for a foul to be called when it's very clear what happened. It's not like Murray is some scrub either. He shouldn't have to win 4 MVPs and win 3 rings to get that call. Especially when this same call was made to start the fourth
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That's why I think Nuggets fans were frustrated about how things unfolded in that final quarter. Sometimes it's not just about the calls, the no calls are just as huge. There is no doubt that both sides have benefitted from a friendly whistle in all four games of this series. For LA it was Game 1 and 4, for DEN 2 and 3. But the problem is there's no consistency. We see all the time when guys don't let shooters land, it's an automatic call. Yet this wasn't.
But this WAS called a foul
In the ECF we saw Hayward get hit in the face by Dragic's shoulder as he went up for a jump shot that was previously called a flagrant (when it happened to Dragic) in this same series, but wasn't that time. That's the big issue with all this, there's no consistency. Bad calls can happen, but when it doesn't happen both ways you have a problem.
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There are always going to be superstar calls. Welcome to the NBA. That's why having superstars is important. I will say I laughed a little bit when Draymond said there was no way the NBA could be fixed when it has become very public knowledge that NBA refs were fixing games. I'm not saying this game was fixed, but it was pretty clear the officials had no interest in calling those two clear plays against LeBron.
Unfortunately, that's life. The Nuggets had their opportunities and didn't close. Those plays weren't why they lost by any means. But that doesn't mean they weren't bullshit plays that benefitted LeBron and the Lakers. Both can be true. I think we can all agree that if LeBron was hit that clearly in a big spot and got a no call in what ultimately was a loss, Lakers fans wouldn't be so cool about it.