- 5 weeks ago
Basketball fans were robbed of a potential epic finish and a true head-to-head showdown in Rockets vs. Nuggets, as questionable officiating took over late — but was that the only reason the ending fell flat? ITL debates what really went wrong and what it says about the Rockets.
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00:00The Rockets get robbed by refs in this one.
00:02Maybe.
00:03That's not decisive.
00:05That's my answer.
00:07It costs them.
00:08I don't know if it costs them the game.
00:10Or I don't know if we're necessarily focusing too much on that.
00:16You know, the first 99 times I watched that, I thought it was a bad call.
00:20And then I kept watching that one.
00:22Being, I mean, you have an instance where Tim Hardaway Jr.
00:26is trying to raise up the floor, come up to grab the inbound pass.
00:32And the call is that a man Thompson tripped him with a kick
00:36and that he went to the floor.
00:38I think a number of replays, if you're watching it on the Peacock stream,
00:41you would have seen it felt like there was nothing there,
00:44that he just clicked his heels as he was going down,
00:47and so he tripped over his own foot.
00:48I think somewhere on the Altitude Sports stream,
00:51which, of course, is the Denver stream,
00:53there is the slightest bit of contact.
00:57But his foot kind of buckled as the contact was happening.
01:00With a man Thompson's foot and Tim Hardaway Jr.'s foot
01:03that seemingly may have kicked off these events that led to him tripping over.
01:08It felt like it was minuscule, and we've seen the word,
01:11like, you know, minuscule or whatever, something similar.
01:14A lot in these last two-minute reports from refs,
01:16they decide to maintain that as a foul.
01:19They do not overturn it.
01:20That ends up being one of quite a few that I would describe as bad calls in this game,
01:26but that one ends up being very consequential in a loss there.
01:29Yeah, it was.
01:31And Ime Adoka, and you'll hear about him at the question of the day,
01:35if you haven't already heard that.
01:36He went absolutely, he got his money's worth.
01:40Yeah, I guess.
01:41I mean, just in general, I think it's a poorly officiated game.
01:45I've seen it a long time, too, have no business being out there,
01:48and the crew chief is acting starstruck.
01:50So you're seeing all kinds of inconsistent calls,
01:55and I'm sure we should have got a few more texts.
01:58What do you say to your team when a game is being called the way that it was tonight?
02:04Keep being who we are.
02:06We're not going to adjust to poorly, poor officials.
02:10So we're going to do what we do,
02:11and hopefully they can adjust and call it the right way.
02:15What was that, five different ways that he ripped the officials?
02:18In every imaginable way, he said he torched the officials.
02:23The fine is coming, and he got his money's worth.
02:24That's about as direct as I've seen a ref, or rather a coach, go at a ref.
02:29Not a ref, actually two specific, right?
02:30The crew of threes and the third.
02:32Two of them shouldn't have been on the floor,
02:34and the third one was starstruck.
02:36And he had all the catchwords, you know, inconsistent,
02:40we're going to be ourselves no matter how bad they are, all of it.
02:43And from my perspective, I ain't too mad at him.
02:47He seems to have a fine, I don't know, bank.
02:52He has an amount of money set aside for that, apparently,
02:55because he went in with that on his heart, on his spirit, some would say.
03:00And I don't think he was wrong.
03:01Like, I think that there was a number of calls in this game that made it look like
03:04this was an amateur hour game, and you don't even have to go to the perspective of
03:09they were hunting the Rockets or whatever.
03:11All the way across this game, it was poorly officiated.
03:13It's one of those things that we're seeing a lot in sports.
03:15I actually texted, I was texting B. Scott during the course of this game,
03:18and I texted him at one point.
03:20I didn't know Imei was still in the business of taking technicals with his players
03:23when Alper and Shane Goon get the technical for arguing what was very reasonably
03:27a foul on him that was not called.
03:30Imei comes up behind him and gets it technical as well.
03:33And it feels like Imei hasn't been doing that as much.
03:35We know he could be a little bit of a hothead.
03:36I'm honestly, I'm looking for the line to maybe bet on Imei Odoka being goaded
03:42into punching somebody at some point.
03:43I think it's a plausible thing.
03:46But jokes aside, we know that he can be that guy.
03:48But he hadn't really done that nearly as much this year.
03:50It feels like that hadn't been in his M.O.
03:53And it came out, and I feel like for good reason.
03:54This felt like a really roughly officiated game.
03:57And I'm not willing to say, or maybe I just don't want to get to this place
04:00where that's the portion of this that I talk about.
04:02Because this was a fantastic game outside of the officiating John Lopez.
04:05Two triple doubles from Shane Goon and Jokic.
04:07And really good play down the stretch.
04:09Durant did his thing as well.
04:12It was a really good game.
04:14It was a badly officiated game.
04:16We know that.
04:17Let's call it quick for you, because you mentioned that there was two triple doubles.
04:20This is the first time in NBA history that two centers had triple doubles in the same game.
04:23Yeah, I saw that.
04:24And officiating cost them.
04:27And I know you were looking at this.
04:30You were watching this game closely.
04:32Down the stretch and in overtime, was that because of the bad call?
04:36I don't think it was just carryover.
04:38And I started kind of looking at this.
04:40You know, some of the things that...
04:41It's not like it was masking bigger problems.
04:44We've talked about some of the things that the Rockets need to do better.
04:47But I did look this up in what the NBA calls, quote, clutch games.
04:51In other words, within five points in the last, I think, minute and a half, two minutes, whatever it is.
04:55The Rockets are now six and six.
04:57Yeah.
04:58They're six and six in what the NBA deems as clutch games.
05:02Which is within five over the last, what, two to five minutes, somewhere in there.
05:06I can't recall.
05:06Yeah.
05:06I think it's five minutes to, you know...
05:08Within five.
05:09Yeah.
05:09Two minutes within five points.
05:11And that ranks like 19th in the NBA.
05:14So, yes, horrible call.
05:16Maybe cost them.
05:17Maybe cost them the game.
05:18Who knows, you know, what happens, you know, with the butterfly effect if that call is not made.
05:23But down the stretch, they had some big mistakes.
05:27Shangoon and Durant had, I believe, nine total turnovers.
05:32Five of them came in the fourth quarter in overtime.
05:34That, to me, was one of the things that really cost them down the stretch after the call.
05:38Yeah.
05:38I thought that there was a few things that came to mind.
05:41One of those is thinking about the two-man game that was happening on the other side.
05:45Now, you know, this is not Denver Nuggets Station.
05:48It will never be.
05:49And the only reason I bring this up is to bring it back to the Rockets.
05:52But watching the two-man game, the well-established two-man game of Nikola Jokic, a multi-time, was a three-time MVP in this league.
06:00Jamal Murray, who, interestingly enough, has not had an all-star appearance.
06:03To his name.
06:04But he is constantly a dude who has these kind of moments, especially late in games.
06:08We've seen him have a number of 50-point games in his career.
06:11Those two dudes, they are really good at playing off of each other, and they've had that over time.
06:16So it's not just individually that they can get their buckets, because they can't.
06:19How many times did you see Nikola Jokic just raise up?
06:22Well, raise up is funny, because he's not elevating off the floor.
06:24Raise up enough.
06:24But, yes, pull the ball up and just shoot over a defender and knock it down for three.
06:29I was, like, the audacity of this dude half of the time.
06:32But even then, like, they have two-man game down the stretch that puts an undue amount of stretch on the defense.
06:39Yes.
06:39Down the stretch, what you saw was a team in the Rockets that doesn't have that next level of in-game thing.
06:45They could get the ball to Shang-Goon and let him go to work, and that is fantastic.
06:49I almost cussed there.
06:50That really is absolutely fantastic watching him do that.
06:53But there's not the additional level of, I'm going to make you have to choose in this moment,
06:58because there's a secondary option at the same time.
07:00Even if you look at Kevin Durant, a lot of those instances are Kevin Durant getting busy,
07:04or even if they have in action, it's a screen and roll to get a matchup to then go to an isolation moment
07:10or something of that effect.
07:11I think that was one of the things that's shown to me.
07:13I don't know if you saw it in a similar way.
07:14Well, beyond that, yes, but beyond that, you know, you're almost in a catch-22 here,
07:19because you want the ball in Shang-Goon's and Durant's hands, but that leads to maybe some turnover,
07:25some sloppy plays, some slow actions getting into your offense or whatever.
07:30You know, obviously, a man had a good game last night, you know, and I think Reed, you know,
07:34Shepard had a good game last night.
07:36But because you're getting the ball into those two dudes' hands the most down the stretch,
07:40that's not really sort of lifting your offense the way it should be, you know,
07:46and it leads to what you're talking about.
07:47Yeah, and I also, like, the final play was...
07:50But you've got to have the ball in their hands.
07:52100%.
07:52Yeah.
07:53And then you mentioned turnovers.
07:54I think also that showed up is you saw a team that knew the particular weakness that this Rockets team has right now,
08:00which is, you know, when they're passing the basketball, they can be susceptible with some of the passing, right?
08:05Right, right.
08:05Because of the lack of having that creator in that moment.
08:09So I thought that this was one of those things where it continues to illuminate one of the things
08:13that I'm not trying to purport as, like, a big issue with this Rockets team because they can hang.
08:18That's what we've noticed even from both of these games versus the Nuggets.
08:20They can hang.
08:21It's the closing out, and it's a lot of these top teams in the league where the closing out ends up looking a little funny in the license.
08:26Well, Texture says the same thing.
08:28It feels right now like we can hang with the elite teams, but taking them to overtime and closing it out, we need to work on that.
08:33That's exactly what I was left with.
08:35It was a horrible call.
08:36It was a bad call.
08:37It might have cost them the game.
08:38Sure.
08:38But I think you've got a real look at against an elite Western Conference team at what could maybe be one of the things that hinders the Rockets.
08:47And one of the things that I loved from Alper and Shane Goon, because, again, as he was getting that technical, I was like, man, he'd be whining a lot, but he's right in this instance.
08:56No, he was right.
08:56I also loved on the backside when, you know, after the game, he's asked about this, Alperen.
09:01He's asked about, like, do you feel like, you know, Jokic over there because he's, you know, the calls were not even.
09:07He was like, yeah, that dude's a three-time MVP.
09:09I understand why, like, his star.
09:12I'm going to get him a little bit of that.
09:13I'll get there.
09:14And I think I appreciate that he has that understanding of where the game is, and he's not, I guess, not complaining in that moment.
09:22Now, even then, it is still pointing to a seeming imbalance of the officiating,
09:26and I think that I don't want to shy away from that.
09:28I don't want it to sound like, oh, here comes Reggie trying to, you know, mitigate or, you know, push to the side of the issues with the referees.
09:34That's clearly becoming more and more of a thing.
09:36It's two different things going on.
09:37But I think that there's going to be instances where you continue to be one of the newer teams in this space of being real contenders in the league,
09:45and it's reasonable to think that this is something that could happen to you again.
09:49It's happened to you a few times.
09:50A lot of Rockets fans, you know, tell it that there's been times where it hasn't felt all that even.
09:56And this is where the old high school or even youth sports coach comes in where it's like you have to play through the refs in this instance.
10:02So finding ways to win, even in those circumstances, I think that that's going to be the next growth point for this Rockets team.
10:07So finding ways to win, even in those circumstances, I think that's going to be the next growth point for this year.
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