Bucks’ Doc Rivers fined $25K for blasting refs after crucial ‘phantom foul’ against LaMelo Ball

The Milwaukee Bucks’ rough start to the season continued on Saturday with a controversial 115-114 loss to the rebuilding Charlotte Hornets that left coach Doc Rivers questioning the officiating during his postgame press conference. The veteran coach ended up paying the price for his comments as he was hit Sunday with a $25,000 fine from the NBA for “public criticism of the officiating.”

The sequence that specifically irked Rivers came after Pat Connaughton gave the Bucks a one-point lead with 19 seconds remaining and LaMelo Ball tried to make something happen for the Hornets on the other end. As he drove against Giannis Antetokounmpo, he suddenly crashed to the ground and the Greek Freak was whistled for a foul. 

Replays showed that Ball tripped over his own feet, but the Bucks had no challenges remaining so they could not contest the call. 

Ball stepped to the line and made both free throws to put the Hornets back in front. The Bucks had one last chance, but Antetokounmpo’s step-back jumper at the buzzer came up short, and the Hornets escaped.  

Rivers was understandably frustrated by how the game ended and went on a two-minute rant addressing not only this call, but the call at the end of regulation in the Bucks’ recent overtime win over the Detroit Pistons — which the Last Two Minute Report later confirmed was incorrect — and the lack of free throws for Antetokounmpo. 

Here is Rivers in full:

“I thought the final play was the ref blowing the call. This is back-to-back games now where on the final play there’s been an incorrect call made. LaMelo Ball fell. He just fell down. Nobody was near him, slipped on his own, we come up with the ball and the game’s over. 

“Back-to-back games now, we’ve had a call made against us that was incorrect. We were lucky versus Detroit the kid missed two free throws. Tonight, LaMelo Ball made the free throws. And there was clearly not a foul. When you watch the video, the ref that called the foul was blocked out by one of our players. You can’t guess at the end of a game. Both teams have played too hard. You can’t guess.

“The free throws tonight were 21 to 11 in their favor in a game that Giannis played. Giannis took one free throw. Go back three plays when Giannis dunked. The whole team fouled him. The whole team fouled him, and it’s a no-call. Giannis drives to the basket, and because he’s powerful, they can hit him on the arm, hit him on the face, and because he keeps going he doesn’t get credit for the contact that he’s creating. Giannis was in the paint the whole night. Someone explain to me how Giannis gets one free throw. 

“But more importantly, we play through all of that, it comes down to two teams playing hard. We get the switch we wanted. We had Giannis on LaMelo Ball, our biggest guy, one of the best defenders in the league, and we call a phantom foul. These mistakes can’t happen. I probably would be frustated if this was just tonight, but now this is back-to-back nights that this has happened to us.”

Later, crew chief Curtis Blair confirmed in the pool report that the call on Antetokounmpo was wrong.

“During live play we called illegal leg to leg contact,” Blair said. “During postgame review when we looked at the play there was no illegal contact on the play.”

He also confirmed that if the Bucks had been able to challenge the call, it would have been overturned.

With the defeat, the Bucks, who were playing without Damian Lillard (concussion) and Khris Middleton (ankles), fell to 4-9. They are in 12th place in the Eastern Conference and remain outside of even the Play-In Tournament spots as the quarter-mark of the season nears.