{"id":348414,"date":"2025-12-16T07:19:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T07:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/348414\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T07:19:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T07:19:07","slug":"rockets-ime-udoka-blasts-officials-after-loss-to-nuggets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/348414\/","title":{"rendered":"Rockets’ Ime Udoka blasts officials after loss to Nuggets"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Houston Rockets<\/a> and Denver Nuggets<\/a> delivered a back-and-forth battle on Monday night in a clash between two of the Western Conference’s top teams.<\/p>\n

Denver ultimately came away with a 128-125 victory in overtime, but it’s the way regulation ended that may have left the Rockets feeling like they had the game taken out of their hands.<\/p>\n

With 2.3 seconds remaining on the clock in the fourth quarter and Houston up 117-116, Nuggets guard Tim Hardaway Jr. appeared to trip over his own feet as he ran to catch the ball on the bound. Rockets’ Amen Thompson was charged with a foul, though, as he did bump legs with Hardaway on the play \u2014 a call that was upheld after a coaches’ challenge from Ime Udoka.<\/p>\n

Udoka was shown visibly frustrated at the call on the broadcast.<\/p>\n

Since the foul occurred before the ball was inbounded, Hardaway was given one free throw, and the Nuggets maintained possession of the ball. <\/p>\n

After Hardaway knocked down the equalizer, Nikola Jokic missed a long triple at the buzzer, sending the game to OT.<\/p>\n

“Just in general, I think it’s the (most) poorly officiated game I\u2019ve seen in a long time,” he said before taking aim at individual referees.<\/p>\n

“Two have no business being out there, and the crew chief was acting star-struck.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Nuggets went on to take a 124-117 lead after a Spencer Jones 3 with 2:59 remaining in overtime, but the Rockets clawed back, getting within three with the ball and 13 seconds remaining. Alperen Sengun missed a contested 24-foot 3 with 4.9 seconds remaining, allowing Denver to hold on for the victory.<\/p>\n

\u2014 with files from the Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Houston Rockets and Denver Nuggets delivered a back-and-forth battle on Monday night in a clash between two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":348415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-348414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/348415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}