In The Name Of Fairness, The Rockets Are No Longer Allowed To Complain About The Officiating

Despite being a series that includes two of the best teams in the entire NBA, there’s no debate that a major storyline in the GS/HOU series has been the officials. This so far has mostly come from Rockets fans and the actual Rockets themselves for how things went at the end of Game 1. We all remember the Harden no call that had everyone up in arms, and the NBA even came out and admitted that Steph Curry should have fouled out before his game sealing three with 30 seconds left. Game 2 didn’t have as much drama after things were so public, and unfortunately the Rockets lost due to their own doing which at times can be hard for the franchise and fanbase to accept.

But because this is the NBA, you knew there was going to be a moment where it would be the Rockets that would benefit from the officiating, and Game 3 was that moment. In a do or die game that ultimately kept their season alive, if I’m a Warriors fan maybe I’m the one that has a beef with the league. The NBA came out and admitted that they did in fact miss this play involving James Harden

I think it was pretty clear that this was a charge on Harden, Draymond Green was in position well outside of the circle in plenty of time. He was actually in position before Harden took off on his floater. While I agree that it can be dicey when these play happen because it’s sort of lame that guys can slide in when a player is already in the air, that’s not really what happened here. Harden eventually made the floater and made this a two possession game, icing the win for the Rockets.

The NBA with it’s tail between their legs, admitted this was the wrong call

Now it’s hard to say that the Warriors would definitely have tied this game up, but given the fact that nobody could stop Kevin Durant you technically can’t rule it out. I look at this like if the roles were reversed, there’s no way the Rockets or their fans wouldn’t be up in arms about this no call. But that’s what happens, refs fuck up. Sometimes it goes against you like in Game 1, sometimes you get the benefit of the doubt like they did on this play. Maybe the refs were factoring in time and score and the moment and all that, but a charge is a charge at the end of the day and that was 100% a charge.

As a casual observer with no dog in this fight, all I want is the rest of this series to be as clean as possible when it comes to the officiating. These teams are so stacked and so even let’s see it play out like it should. A quick look at tonight’s officiating crew tell us that there’s no Tony Brothers/Scott Foster on the docket, and there’s this fact from Saturday you also have to consider

So now that both sides have a gripe with how things may have been called through 3 games, we can finally stop the bitching and just focus on the basketball.