Warriors voice frustration after getting 'punked' by Lakers, refs
Golden State Warriors fan pages and Reddit boards were up in arms following the team’s 127-97 Game 3 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on Saturday, besmirching the referees who they felt gave the Lakers preferential treatment.
While not endorsing the theory outright, Warriors players didn’t exactly laud praise on the officials.
“[I’ll] just keep playing the defense I’m playing. Maybe they’ll call it, maybe they won’t,” said Draymond Green, who was whistled for five fouls, including a technical for arguing a foul call.
The Warriors were called for just one more foul (22) than the Lakers (21), but Golden State racked up three costly technical fouls and a flagrant, while Los Angeles was whistled for just one technical and no flagrants.
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Those technicals added to a huge gap between the teams in free-throw points. The Warriors went 12-for-17 from the line, while the Lakers scored 28 points on a stunning 37 free-throw attempts. The disparity confirmed some of the worst fears Warriors fans had going into the series. The Lakers ended the regular season topping the league in free-throw attempts, while the Warriors finished dead last.
Andre Iguodala was also emphatic that Lakers star LeBron James was traveling during the game without getting penalized.
Green was defiant in stating that he won’t allow how the referees officiate the series to affect his play. “I won’t adapt. I’m going to keep playing the defense I’ve been playing for 11 years,” Green said.
Steph Curry acknowledged that the calls were “frustrating” but stressed that the team cannot “get distracted by stuff that you can’t control.”
Throughout his postgame presser, Curry spoke in cliches (“We know who we are and what we’re capable of”) in a possible effort to mask his frustration. At one point, he even admitted he was just repeating “all the things we always say after a loss.”
Klay Thompson, for one, was not interested in blaming the referees for the loss.
“We got punked tonight, on the boards, on the glass, at the free-throw line,” he said.
Game 4 tips off on Monday at 7 p.m. at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
Source: SFGATE
