Last night, after the Oklahoma City Thunder beat the San Antonio Spurs for a fourth consecutive series win, Spurs forward Tim Duncan had a few words to say about the officiating.
I’m always the first one to say that a team should take care of business so that bad officiating can’t make the difference between a win and a loss, but it appears several Spurs fans were up in arms about the Thunder getting every call, while Spurs coach Gregg Popovich and his players questioned some of the calls.
The worst part was that it came in the part of the game where the Spurs were making stops and executing on offense, which stopped any momentum and put the Thunder on the line for free throws.
“Down the stretch for a period there, it seems like they got every call possible,” Duncan told the media following last night’s game. “That really changed the tides. We were playing tough defense, we were trying to make stops and trying to push them back and the whistle kept blowing and they kept going to the line and getting some free points there.”
While many Spurs fans will agree that any momentum the Spurs had was stopped by foul calls, Duncan also said the Thunder got to the line by being aggressive. In the end, a few points that may have gone the other way don’t make the biggest difference when the Spurs had an 18-point lead in the first half.
The Spurs will now have a long offseason to think about what they’ll have to do to make another long playoff run next season.
