The New York Knicks losing streak hit two games following their defeat, 111-100, on Sunday against the Oklahoma City Thunder. The storyline surrounding the refs and foul calls for the Thunder and star guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is nothing new, and following the game, Knicks head coach Mike Brown gave a bit of a tongue-in-cheek answer when talking about the officiating, as per Kristian Winfield of the New York Daily News.
“You can’t reach because the team does a fantastic job, starting with SGA, of getting the officials to believe a foul has occurred. Their gamesmanship is off the charts,’’ Brown said. “They do a great job of exploiting it, so I tip my hat off to them.”
Overall, the Knicks committed 25 fouls while the Thunder were called for 22 fouls. But while the fouls committed were about even, the free-throw discrepancy is probably what Mike Brown was talking about after the Knicks’ loss. They shot only 17 free-throws, converting on 13 of them.
The Thunder, on the other hand, shot 38 free-throws while knocking down 31 of them. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander took 16 of the Thunder’s free-throw attempts, converting on 13 of them. He finished with 30 points, giving him nearly half of his points off free-throws.
What was more upsetting to Brown though was the Knicks’ reaction to the refs, and seeming unwillingness to adjust their mentality despite how the game was being officiated.
“You can’t waste your energy against the officials, and we did that tonight – and it still didn’t change,” Brown continued. “[They still got calls].”
Whether or not the officiating was a cause for the Knicks’ loss is a different story. But the Knicks fell to 48-27, and are now two and half games behind the Boston Celtics for the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference standings.
The New York Knicks losing streak hit two games following their defeat, 111-100, on Sunday against the Oklahoma City Thunder. The storyline surrounding the refs and foul calls for the Thunder and star guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is nothing new, and following the game, Knicks head coach Mike Brown gave a bit of a tongue-in-cheek answer when talking about the officiating, as per Kristian Winfield of the New York Daily News.