Complaining about officiating is a loser’s mentality. I’m guilty of it, too. But it’s a loser’s mentality. Ask yourself this: Have you ever heard a winning team complain about calls?
It’s natural, and sometimes it’s justified, to grasp for straws when your season is slipping away, and for both the Los Angeles Lakers and Philadelphia 76ers, boy is it slipping, but they better be careful, because that mentality could linger throughout the remainder of their first-round series and into what is about to be a precarious offseason.
Let’s start with the Lakers, who took every opportunity to blame the referees for Monday’s 101-99 loss to the defending champion Denver Nuggets, even though they had plenty of chances to put the game away.
“Some tough calls,” Lakers head coach Darvin Ham told reporters. “Some tough non-calls, but you can’t use any of that as an excuse. You have got to go out there and be ready to make plays, whether the whistle gets blown or not. It’s getting real tricky. You go through the season, games being officiated one way, and then you get to the playoffs, and I guess it’s left up to the interpretation of the three [officials].”
Hmm, where have we heard this before? Oh, that’s right, after a late-February loss to the Phoenix Suns, when Ham said, “I’m not one to use referees as an excuse, but it’s becoming increasingly tough because of the inconsistency. I’m seeing our guys get the same contact on them as we’re supposedly committing. And the whistle is not being blown.” Sounds an awful lot like … he’s one to use the referees as an excuse?
His players were a little more to the point, complaining about a third-quarter foul call against Denver’s Michael Porter Jr., which was overturned on a challenge. Even though replay showed Porter’s arm make contact with Lakers guard D’Angelo Russell‘s face, officials called the contact “incidental” upon review.
Michael Porter Jr. hit D’Angelo Russell in the face. MPJ was called for a foul which was then…
