Marcus Smart was clearly still irritated in his postgame presser over the late-game officiating that allowed Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo to stay in the game with five fouls.
Not so mad he didn’t continue to demand justice for Breonna Taylor as he has done in all his media availability sessions, but pretty irked nonetheless.
Asked if he had gotten an explanation for the blocking foul assessed to him that effectively put the game out of reach, the Flower Mound native regretfully noted he had.
“I wish we got a better one,” he offered, “but I think the excuse was, I was late on the charge. They say that the replay center said I was late. Frankly, I think we all know what that was about; it was Giannis’ sixth fouls [and they] didn’t want to get him out. We’ll call a spade a spade — that’s just what it is.”
To make matters worse, that wasn’t even the only time in the game Antetokounmpo got the benefit of the doubt with five fouls.
Just seconds earlier in game time, the Greek Freak narrowly avoided ejection due to a curious technicality — or so the story goes.
Celtics head coach Brad Stevens took the no-call in stride — but then there are few things he doesn’t.
“[The refs] just said he didn’t get hit in the stomach,” he calmly explained.
“They said it could not [be] called [a] personal foul, so that must be when you go to the review to see if it’s a hostile act, I guess, you can’t call a personal foul.”
If true, that’s a strange rule, and if not, it’s even worse.
All this griping aside, in the grand scheme of things the contest was still close and the Celtics were able to keep the Bucks from running away with the game, even closing in for the kill before the zebras muddied the waters.
The old truism that the team shouldn’t allow themselves to be put in a position where a bad call decides the game holds here as well.
But, despite the positives we saw from Boston adjusting on the fly and holding their own, it’s always going to leave a bad taste when things like this happen at the end of a close, high-level game.
