sharply criticizing the officiating<\/a> after Wednesday night\u2019s Game 2 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Booker was fined $35,000, though the technical foul he picked up that prompted the criticism was rescinded.<\/p>\nThe league also rescinded the technical fouls on Dillon Brooks and Luguentz Dort that were issued with 8:15 left in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
Booker was upset about the third-quarter technical foul he received after trying to save a ball from going out of bounds. Booker blindly flipped the ball back onto the court, but it struck Oklahoma City big man Jaylin Williams. Thunder guard Alex Caruso then walked to the officials and motioned for a technical foul, arguing Booker had flipped the ball at Williams on purpose. The officials sided with the Thunder.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 11 years, I haven\u2019t called a ref out by name, but James (Williams) was terrible tonight, through and through,\u201d Booker said after the game. \u201cIt\u2019s bad for the sport, it\u2019s bad for the integrity of the sport. People are going to start viewing this as the WWE if they\u2019re not held responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the Phoenix locker room, Brooks criticized officials for favoring Oklahoma City, the top seed in the Western Conference playoffs, in the first-round series. Asked about a late foul that knocked Oklahoma City star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to the court, Brooks told news reporters they should interview the officials.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat should be a new thing in the NBA,\u201d Brooks said. \u201cOfficials got to explain themselves. It\u2019s getting ridiculous, and you can see it starts getting fiery. There\u2019s no control out there. And now, they\u2019re just whistling on one side.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Booker and Suns coach Jordan Ott said they did not get an explanation for the technical foul.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know I haven\u2019t won a championship in this league, but I have been in it for 11 years now,\u201d Booker said. \u201cTo get to this point, to be treated like that for me to even be saying something out loud, it\u2019s bad. \u2026 Whatever I get fined for, everybody can pull the clips and see where the frustration comes from.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suns owner Mat Ishbia on Thursday posted his support for Booker on social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am 100% behind Devin Booker here,\u201d Ishbia said. \u201cLast night was not a good look for our league. Let me be clear, we didn\u2019t lose because of officiating, but that doesn\u2019t make last night any less important. If the referees are going to demand respect from the players \u2014 as they should \u2014 then the players should demand respect from the referees. When a referee is missing calls and clearly disrespecting the players, almost mocking them, they must be held accountable.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody who loves this game enjoyed watching that last night. They want to see the players compete at the highest level. The league needs to be far more aggressive about this kind of thing. All players and all fans deserve it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX \u2014 Devin Booker knew it was coming. And it did. On Thursday, the NBA fined Booker for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,6402,6415,99],"class_list":["post-603174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-phoenix-suns","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}