Here we go.
In any postseason series, there’s going to be a lot of talk about the officiating. One side feels like they’re the victim one game, the other the next. In the case of the Toronto Raptors and Indiana Pacers, their respective head coaches, Dwane Casey and Frank Vogel, began a mild battle for the attention and favor of referees back before the series even began.
“We’ve got to be disciplined with our hands and with our body position and understand that they’re going to throw their bodies into us, snap their heads back and swing their arms through legal defenders and hope the whistle blows,” Vogel said ahead of Game 1.
“The way Indiana plays with their physicality — grabbing, holding, bumping and grinding — we’ve got to play through that and I’d much rather be doing that at home than on the road,” Casey responded.
It continued early on, from players to coaches and especially fans. There has been a sense of unfortunate calls on both sides, because of course there has been – it’s the playoffs, where every possession is magnified, the attention is greater, the emotional investment deeper, and it’s really easy to see only the side that impacts your side negatively.
But it’s been a battle both teams are waging, using the media, as expected, to perhaps color the subconscious of officials or even swing the league office’s focus. Paul George thinks DeMarre Carroll’s gotten away with some stuff, and Carroll’s opted to just kind of laugh, save for the skirmishes between the friends in back-to-back games now. Both coaches have spoke about the physicality of the series and the way it’s been called in a manner that suggests they’re getting the short end of the stick. This is just what you do in a playoff series.
Solomon Hill took it to a bit of another level after the Raptors beat the Pacers thanks to an incredible Game 5 comeback on Tuesday. Hill seems to think the Raptors aren’t even playing basketball:
It’s kinda hard when, it’s like, you wanna play basketball, but it’s not really basketball out there. Guys are trying to get fouls, going away from the concept of scoring just to try to get fouled…That’s all it is.
Here’s the full interview:
Solo: Raptors aren’t playing basketball. They’re just going after PG and trying to draw fouls. #Pacershttps://t.co/Cm0JucpywL
— FOX Sports Indiana (@FSIndiana) April 27, 2016
I do think Hill has a gripe with George drawing a technical for his reaction to that loose ball with Kyle Lowry, but his general take on the Raptors’ style seems like kind of a convenient non-excuse. The Raptors only took six free-throws in the pivotal fourth quarter, after all, and while the Pacers are welcome to argue that their 29 free-throw attempts over the first three quarters changed how they were defending…why, if it was working? The Pacers committed six turnovers in the fourth, surrendered three offensive rebounds, and shot 26.7 percent. That probably had more to do with the collapse than the Raptors’ 6-of-6 mark at the line, two of which were off of an intentional foul.
And sure, the Raptors definitely do invite contact as one of the league’s most drive-heavy teams. They ranked third in the NBA in free-throw rate during the regular season, and it’s a big part of what DeRozan and Lowry like to do. That doesn’t mean it’s illegal, though, or not a justified strategy – the counter is to defend them differently, and it’s convenient that this gets brought up after a Toronto win and not, say, Game 4, when the Raptors shot just five fewer free throws in a loss.
Yes, the Raptors are shooting a lot of free throws, because that’s what they do. Want to know who else is shooting a lot of free throws, despite that not really being what they do? The Pacers.
It’s far too reductive to simply say the games have been called even from that, given the differences in defensive quality (and consistency) and styles of play, but I don’t really see Hill’s gripe here. The Raptors try to draw fouls. The Pacers have done a good job avoiding that and defending around it at times, and a poor job of it at others. And it didn’t have much to do with the fourth-quarter collapse.
I guess just let this serve as a reminder that no matter how things are playing out, neither side if ever going to be happy with the way the game’s being called.
