Mike Brown knows there are multiple reasons why the Knicks lost Game 3 of the NBA Finals on Monday night.
Poor attention to detail on defense. Untimely turnovers. Not enough movement off the ball on offense. Too much dribbling. Slow decision-making. And on and on.
But one thing ate at Brown as much as anything listed above: the officiating.
“They came and took the game. But I will say this: I never thought I would be in the NBA Finals and see a team get 24 free throw attempts in the second half to another team’s eight,” Brown said late Monday night. “I don’t think I complain much about officials or the fairness when it comes to the free throw attempts….Maybe we were fouling. But they fouled, too.
“KAT gets the ball off of a loose-ball rebound and he shoots it, and he gets whacked across the arm and they hit the ball and it goes out of bounds on the baseline. There’s no foul. There were opportunities for fouls to be called, to at least try to even the free throws out,” he continued.
“Now, we didn’t play good. San Antonio played great. We could have played better. There was a lot of things that we didn’t do that we did in Game 1 and Game 2. But to go 24 free throw attempts in the second half, that’s 48 for the game if you think about the way they called that second half, compared to eight. All the shots we took, we got fouled four times, roughly, for eight free throw attempts. Again, I don’t complain much. I never thought I’d see that in an NBA Finals game, and I saw it tonight. That’s tough to overcome when you’re playing against a great team.”
The Knicks were in the bonus three minutes into the fourth quarter, so they played a role in the free-throw discrepancy.
But the officiating — in general — has been an issue for New York. There were complaints about calls behind the scenes over the first two games.
On Monday, Brown made his case publicly.
“There are a lot of things we can do better and we are going to have to do better, but the same breath, like I said, hopefully they will see some more fouls called against them, so it’s not 24-8,” Brown said. “This is a four-point ballgame. Four-point ballgame. One-possession ballgame going down the stretch. It’s tough to overcome.
“If they do this in Game 4 where it’s 24-8 in the second half,” he continued. “It’s going to be tough for us to win.”
Sometimes in playoff series, this public plea can change how the next game is called.
We’ll find out on Wednesday if Brown’s words will have that kind of impact.
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