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With the Dallas Mavericks are in the middle of the giving the Clippers a real scare in the second half of their first-round series opener, Kristaps Porzingis was ejected midway through the third quarter after receiving his second technical foul of the game. And let’s just say, neither technical was exactly egregious. One could argue they were both bogus.
In fact, LeBron James made that exact argument.
The tech in question was assessed after Porzingis stepped in as Marcus Morris and Luka Doncic were getting into it. Porzingis lightly pushed Morris away. Before we go any further with the player reactions, let’s take a look.
For what it’s worth, former official Steve Javie, working for ESPN, said on the broadcast that he believes the officials made the right call on Porzingis’ second tech, saying he came into the situation not as a peacemaker but as an escalator. That is highly debatable.
What makes it worse is the first tech on Porzingis was pretty weak, too. He made what replays showed to be a pretty clean block, and when he was whistled for a foul, he reacted, momentarily, as any normal human being would in the middle of an emotional playoff game.
The guy didn’t berate the ref. He didn’t go on and on and point and curse. He reacted, for a second, then stopped. This is just ridiculous officiating. This is the playoffs, man. There is going to be emotion. Porzingis didn’t do anything on either of these plays that warranted a tech.
But OK, fine, you gave him the first one. Swallow your whistle on the second. You don’t throw the second-best player on the Mavericks out of the game for that. And you can bet NBA Twitter reacted accordingly in echoing LeBron’s ‘bogus’ sentiment, starting with Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki.
