Philadelphia 76ers players and coaches are livid over a missed call on the final play of Wednesday’s game against the Los Angeles Clippers.
76ers guard Kelly Oubre Jr. drove to the basket and appeared to draw contact with less than one second remaining. But no foul was called, resulting in the Clippers winning the game 108-107, although crew chief Kevin Scott later said in a pool report that a foul should have been called.
76ers head coach Nick Nurse stormed onto the court following the no-call and Oubre furiously approached the referees, yelling profanities at each in turn.
kelly oubre just walked up to every ref and said “you a bitch, you a bitch, you a bitch” pic.twitter.com/rwq38tl1Bp
— michael doleac (@3MWD__) March 28, 2024
Oubre addressed his actions after the game.
“First and foremost, heat of the moment,” Oubre said. “This is an intense basketball game, of course. And we’re not perfect. The refs aren’t perfect. I want to apologize for just losing my cool, because that’s something I try to work on each and every day, and try to represent God in the best way I possibly can, and that wasn’t it. So I just ask for forgiveness.
“But I saw Coach Nurse getting riled up and if our coach is going to fight for us and he’s going there, then I’m right behind him. But at the end of the day, it wasn’t cool. So I’ll take whatever penalties come with that and you have to move on, but I got to be better in a sense.”
Meanwhile, Nurse said his team couldn’t blame the loss entirely on the referees
“Well, at 104-101, we had the ball sideline, [and] Tyrese [Maxey] breaks into the backcourt wide open, slips and falls, and they get an and-1 out of that,” Nurse said. “We come down and score, they’re full-court press and they knock one off of Kelly out of bounds.”
Nurse added that he didn’t agree with some of the calls made late in the game.
“I think [Oubre] took it in there pretty hard,” Nurse said. “I looked at it on our computers a couple times. I thought it was certainly contact, certainly as much of the last two or three that got called and-1s at the other end… I thought it was enough contact to call. [But] that’s the way it goes sometimes.”
The eighth-seeded 76ers are now13-26 without Joel Embiid in the lineup this season, while the fourth-seeded Clippers are 3-7 over their past 10 games.
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