Blazers Criticize Refs While Trying to Own Game 3 Loss
Damian Lillard insisted he wasn't making excuses for another hard-fought loss in the Trail Blazers' contentious first-round series against the Denver Nuggets.
But after a Game 3 that included 24 more personal fouls on Portland and a plus-14 advantage in free throws attempts for Denver, Lillard couldn't help but keep coming back to the officiating.
"We're playing aggressive and physical just like they are, and everything we do is a foul," he said. "I'm not saying that's the reason we lost, but I'm saying it's gonna be tough when they shoot the ball that well from three and we fight and scratch and claw back into the game, and then everything we do is a foul."
Jusuf Nurkic was a bit less diplomatic.
After fouling out for the second straight game – this time after the Blazers had scratched and clawed their way back to tie the score midway through the fourth quarter – he was left scratching his head at the referees' decision-making.
"Gotta trick the referees, right?" Nurkic said when asked what he has to do to stay on the floor. "It's what they do. I don't know. It's my fault to get in foul trouble, but at the same time I'm looking at the foul and I can't agree on all those, man. I really can't. I feel like four or five fouls, Nikola is a great player, but he just grab my arm and hold my hand and they give me a fifth foul. I think that's unacceptable in the playoffs. If they have to have four referees out there, have four referees out there."
Portland trailed Denver by three when Nurkic, just off the bench, was called for a reach foul as Nikola Jokic caught an entry pass at the elbow. Barely over two minutes of game time later, Jokic was whistled for his sixth and final foul, a hack of Aaron Gordon from behind after he was beaten backdoor.
Video of Nurkic's fifth foul shows hand-fighting with Jokic, the type that both foul-prone bigs routinely engage in on both sides of the ball. Whether the contact was worthy of a foul is questionable; what's not is that Nurkic getting entangled with Jokic at that spot on the floor was pointless.
Nurkic's third foul, in the middle of the third quarter, was even more obvious despite him singling it out after the game as an especially egregious call. Facundo Campazzo anticipated his Eurostep on the roll, clearly beating him to the spot as Nurkic initiated contact. Terry Stotts' subsequent challenge was unsuccessful.
As Nurkic was back on the floor egging on the Moda Center crowd's "Ref you suck!" chant, Portland color announcer Lamar Hurd was simultaneously explaining why the call on the floor was correct.
Like Lillard, Nurkic ultimately took responsibility for his foul trouble. But he wanted to have it both ways with regard to criticism of the officiating, too.
"I don't wanna necessarily get fined and say all the wild stuff. It's on me," Nurkic said. "I'm gonna take this one. I'm not gonna be in that position no more. But at the same time, I feel like they gotta communicate with us more."
Were there some iffy calls in Game 3? Of course. Any contest featuring offensive luminaries like Jokic and Lillard is bound to become about the refs, especially in the playoffs. It's just too difficult for defenses to even try and stop players of their caliber without committing contact that could be deemed a foul on nearly every possession.
But the film doesn't lie on Nurkic's fouls – at least half of them were obvious. Five of them came in the second half. A bad no-call doesn't give Portland license to hack with impunity, no matter how frustrated Nurkic, Lillard and their teammates are.
In wake of Game 2, Lillard cautioned against his team getting overly involved in trash talk and confrontation. He worried the Blazers might lose focus on the real task at hand if they got stuck in the mud with Denver.
Portland needs to heed that same advice when it comes to officiating going forward. Ask C.J. McCollum.
"The refs aren't why we lost tonight," he said. "We gotta get stops. We gotta tighten some things up, obviously. There's a couple calls down the stretch, loose balls, that they called a foul, things of that nature. All in all, we just gotta be better."