On a night when the referees seemed to want to inject themselves into every aspect of the game, this cheap shot by Mason Plumlee was somehow not deemed a flagrant foul when it happened in the fourth quarter.
Fortunately, the NBA league office saw it differently and upgraded the foul to a flagrant on Thursday.
The league defines a Flagrant foul 1 as “unnecessary contact committed by a player against an opponent.” This unquestionably was that. A Fragrant foul 2 is “unnecessary and excessive” contact, and this was in the running for that, too.
McCain scored 18 points of his 20 points in the second half on Tuesday night as the Thunder pulled away and picked up a comfortable Game 5 win to go up 3-2 and put themselves one win away from a return trip to the NBA Finals. It wasn’t just Plumlee, Bismack Biyombo also had a hard late-game foul on McCain, apparently trying to establish the Spurs’ toughness. If that was the plan, they should have done it in the first three quarters when the game was in doubt, rather than looking frustrated in the final minutes.
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