April 23, 2024
Vincent Carchietta/USA TODAY Sports
The Sixers have not been pleased with NBA officials during the first two games of their playoff series against the New York Knicks. Now, a team spokesperson tells reporters they are filing a complaint to the NBA league office.
In case you have not heard: the Sixers, despite leading by five points with fewer than 30 seconds left on the clock at Madison Square Garden in Game 2, suffered an epic collapse at the hands of the New York Knicks.
The chaotic final moment of the game will be remembered for a lucky bounce on a three-pointer by Knicks All-Star point guard Jalen Brunson and the eventual game-winner, a spot-up triple from New York sharpshooter Donte DiVincenzo. It will also be remembered for the miscues by the officiating crew that preceded DiVincenzo's dagger: first, the officials appeared to miss Sixers head coach Nick Nurse's attempts to call a timeout, which would have given the Sixers time to regroup with a two-point lead and the opportunity to advance the ball to half-court, giving them considerably more space to operate.
When Nurse's initial attempts at a timeout were unsuccessful, Kyle Lowry had to throw a dangerous inbounds pass to Tyrese Maxey -- who had been the star of the night prior to its final seconds. Maxey leaped over a double-team by Brunson and Knicks wing Josh Hart to make the catch, when Brunson grabbed Maxey's jersey, causing the Sixers' point guard to fall to the floor. Brunson likely should have been called for a foul, but the whistles remained silent. Nurse once again tried to get a timeout in, this time seeming to repeatedly motion and yell for the timeout. But once again, he was unable to get an official's attention.
Here's Nick Nurse repeatedly calling timeout and the referees ignoring him the whole time https://t.co/WyMLtfc911 pic.twitter.com/eSHzdPJgkW
— Daniel Olinger (@dan_olinger) April 23, 2024
Then, an absolute disaster came to fruition: Hart ripped the ball out of Maxey's hands while the Sixers' first-time All-Star was on the floor, giving the Knicks possession while only trailing by two points. DiVincenzo missed a wide open three, but an offensive rebound by Knicks center Isaiah Hartenstein revived the possession, leading to another DiVincenzo attempt. That one went through the net, and suddenly the Sixers were walking back to the locker room, stunned and facing an 0-2 series deficit.
Game 3 is in Philadelphia on Thursday night, and the Sixers have no choice but to let this crushing defeat go and focus on what is next.
Right?
Maybe not.
A Sixers spokesperson has told various media sources -- the first of them being Kyle Neubeck of PHLY -- that the team is planning to lodge a complaint with the NBA league office regarding not just the referees' mistakes in the final minute of Game 2, but how each of the first two games of the series were officiated.
Nobody can blame the Sixers for their anger and frustration after what took place. They were seconds away from wrapping up a win they felt like they needed in their third consecutive contest that was riddled with a wide range of extreme emotions, and found themselves swiftly and shockingly defeated. The exasperation among the team was palpable as soon as postgame media availability began, and that is understandable.
Nurse and reigning NBA MVP Joel Embiid, who called the officiating down the stretch "unacceptable" did not mince words in their postgame media availabilities. And again, it is easy to grasp why their emotions were what they were.
But the Sixers filing a complaint about the officiating across Games 1 and 2 simply rings hollow.
It would be one thing if the Sixers were simply filing a grievance or protest (the actual title of their planned complaint is currently unknown) over the way the final 27 seconds of play in Game 2 were officiated. Nothing impacting the results of the game or series would come out of it: there has been just one successful protest in the NBA over the last four-plus decades, as protests are almost always quickly denied by the league office once filed. But even if the Sixers knew that, there was a chance the NBA could admit that its officials missed Nurse's repeated attempts to call a timeout. Brunson's unpunished tug of Maxey's jersey will very likely appear as a missed call in the NBA's somewhat-infamous Last 2 Minute (L2M) reports, which publicly detail and re-litigate crucial late-game calls by officials in each contest during both the regular season and playoffs.
But the Sixers' apparent plan to bring up the officiating across the entirety of both games to the league office delegitimizes their initial grounds for complaint that seemed at least justifiable. Frankly, it comes off as whiny and as a waste of time more than anything else to assign six NBA officials blame for their own 0-2 series deficit.
The Sixers were completely dominated by the Knicks' physicality in Game 1, allowing New York to grab 23 offensive rebounds. Embiid made only two of his 12 field goal attempts in the second half. The Sixers' bench scored a total of seven points on a combined 3-10 shooting line from the field. Hart was the star of the show, scoring 22 points, grabbing 13 rebounds and knocking down four triples, while third-year guard Miles "Deuce" McBride scored 21 points on 12 shots, including five made threes.
Those are the reasons the Sixers found themselves trailing in the series in the first place.
It is true that the Sixers likely would not have lost Game 2 if not for the mistakes made by officials throughout those two fateful possessions. But it is also true that they likely would not have lost the game if Embiid had made more than 12 of his 29 field goal attempts. Or if the team shot better than 42.9 percent from the field. Or if the team made more than 72.7 percent of its free throws -- including four misses from the line by Embiid in the first half alone and a pair of crucial misses by the usually-reliable Lowry in the final moments of the game.
The officiating crew in Game 2 of Sixers-Knicks bears some responsibility for the Sixers losing the game. Some. But as the Sixers return home on the wrong end of an 0-2 deficit, the reality is they have nobody to blame but themselves: and wasting everybody's time and energy with a complaint that will not go anywhere is not going to change that.
