Refs Hit Frustrated LeBron With A Tech For Complaining About Getting Blocked

Players in this post:
Kyle Anderson John Holland LeBron James

A lot of people on social media saw the above clip of a pissed-off LeBron throwing the ball off a stanchion, twice, and complained he should have been given a tech. If this happened earlier in the game, I'm sure the refs would have.

Here's why they gave him a break:

  • The game was over. The Cavs were down by 16 with a minute left and considering they only managed to score 20 in the quarter and more than 21 in one of the four quarters, they didn't have a chance of making a comeback.
  • Earlier in the fourth, seconds after the refs called LeBron for travelling (seriously, they really did), they hit him with a tech for complaining after Kyle "Slow-Mo" Anderson blocked his shot. LeBron responded with a missed three and only managed to score two more points in the final quarter before getting called for an offensive foul and getting scored on in the above clip.

So, if the refs would have called a tech during that meaningless final minute of the Cavs loss, then LeBron would have been ejected, which would be doing him a favor since he could leave the game early. I think the refs wanted to torture him and make him watch the final scoreless minute that ended with John Holland (!) missing a three for the Cavs.

LeBron did finish with a nice line of 33 points (despite only getting to the free throw line 4 times on 18 drives), 13 rebounds and 9 assists and recieved some high praise from Coach Popovich, who compared super hero Black Panther to him while ripping Laura Ingraham.

“How cool is that for kids to see that? To have that superhero,” he said. “LeBron has been like that for a long time, and for someone to be totally numb to that and attack him in such a childish way really speaks volumes about that individual than it does LeBron.

“That’s what is amazing about this when you look at this guy, all the millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars he’s given, tens of millions of kids that see him, that are inspired by him.

“He’s very, very special. We should all be very proud that we have somebody like that who is willing to speak about a variety of topics, and you’ve listened to the lot.”