The NBA is standing behind the noticeable rise in foul calls throughout this year’s postseason, despite growing frustration from players, coaches and fans around the league.
Referees are calling roughly eleven percent more personal fouls per game in the playoffs compared to the regular season, one of the biggest postseason jumps the league has seen in decades.
But NBA senior vice president of referee development and training Monty McCutchen says the increase is a natural byproduct of playoff basketball.
“It would be very difficult on our players, on our coaches, most certainly on our referees, if the intensity of a seven-game series that we see in the playoffs exhibited itself over 82 games,” McCutchen said at the NBA Draft Combine in Chicago. “NBA playoff basketball is one of the great spectacles of all sport in my opinion. You get the combination of the passion and strength of our players and coaching staffs in tight spaces over seven-game series. And I think that that absolutely makes for a different game.”
Complaints about officiating have become a major talking point during these playoffs.
Los Angeles Lakers guard Austin Reaves and several teammates confronted referees at midcourt following a Game Two loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, while Detroit Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff recently blasted a free-throw disparity as “unacceptable.”
Still, McCutchen insisted officials are not changing their standards once the postseason begins.
“We’re not putting our whistles in our pocket,” McCutchen said. “That being said, I think it’s fair to debate, talk about passionately, like many of our fans and people in the media do, about whether that’s the appropriate enough [amount] of whistles to blow. But we are trying to meet the moments of the passion of the playoffs in a way that upholds our standards.”
One flashpoint came after Victor Wembanyama was ejected for elbowing Minnesota’s Naz Reid during the Spurs’ series against the Timberwolves.
Spurs coach Mitch Johnson defended his star afterward, arguing opponents have consistently tried to “impose their physicality on him.”
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