The game had just ended and Austin Reaves made a straight beeline for referee John Goble.
A crowd formed around him, including his Lakers teammates, staffers and another referee, while Reaves gave Goble a piece of his mind after being “disrespected” during Los Angeles’ 125-107 Game 2 loss to the Thunder to fall in a 2-0 series hole in the Western Conference semifinals.
It made for an unusual scene since referees usually do not receive talking-downs after games and marked the second time Reaves sternly addressed Goble.
“At the end of day, we’re grown men and I didn’t feel like he needed to yell in my face like that. I told him that, I wasn’t disrespectful,” Reaves said. “I told him if I did that to him first I would have gotten a tech, I felt like the only reason I didn’t get a tech was because he knew he was in the wrong. I felt disrespected.”
Not that long after Reaves’ postgame outburst, Lakers coach JJ Redick took it even further by calling out the stripes while stating LeBron James has the “worst whistle” of any star player.
He did clarify that he did not feel the referees cost his team the game.
“I sarcastically said the other day, they’re the most disruptive team without fouling,” Redick said. “I mean, they have a few guys that foul on every possession. All the good defenses do. … They’re hard enough to play, you’ve got to be able to just call if if they foul, and they do foul.”
Plenty of teams have made it known that they believe the referees are one-sided when it comes to Thunder games and frustrations boiled over for the Lakers on Thursday now that they’ve lost both games in these series by 18 points and stand two losses away from elimination.
Reaves said Goble particularly upset him late in the game when the guard alleged the referee “yelled in my face” while he positioned himself during a jump ball.
The Thunder gained possession and hit a 3 to take a 107-94 lead with 5:54 remaining.
“I thought it was disrespectful,” Reaves said. “The whole time that was going on over there, I don’t think he said much to them.”
The Lakers called timeout right after that score and Reaves tore into Goble, with lip readers speculating he said: “That’s some bulls–t for you to talk to me like that.”
It appeared he called the referee a crass term for a female body part after Goble turned his back to him and walked over to the scorer’s table.
Reaves later said he felt he was respectful to the referees all night and has said there’s “a million” times where he’s said “way worse stuff.”
Redick said he had no problem with his team’s emotions, while not mentioning Reaves specifically, and the series shifts to Los Angeles on Saturday with the Lakers essentially in a must-win spot.
“Our guys were so good tonight just staying together, poised,” Redick said. “The emotion is part of basketball. I think some of the reason (the Thunder are) officiated the way they are is because they don’t show emotion, and that’s a credit to them. They’ve really been taking the emotion out of the game. They’re super tight-knit. They don’t complain to the officials and maybe they’re the beneficiaries of that, I don’t know.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
