With about five minutes remaining in the first quarter of Game 3 of the Finals, shoved hard to the ground in a play that resulted in no foul call on the floor. However, NBA Senior Vice President and Head of Development and Training for Referee Operations Monty McCutchen admitted Tuesday that the play should have been whistled a foul.
“Well, most certainly I think we can all agree that a foul was missed on that play,” McCutchen said on ESPN’s NBA Today. “A big part of our job is on-ball, off-ball exchanges between referees. We did a poor job of that here, where we’ve got two people on ball and we don’t see the screening action. Lots of fighting over screens throughout the game. And if we break down in our fundamentals in even the smallest amounts, we have the opportunity to miss a clear foul as we missed here.”
The play itself came with a bit less than five minutes remaining in the first quarter. took the ball up the court, and Brunson was fighting for position with Wembanyama just above the free-throw line. After about a second of physical contact between the two, Wembanyama can be seen shoving Brunson by the head into the ground.
Brunson frustrated at Wemby 😳
The question now is whether or not this play simply should have been called a common foul, or if it rises to the level of a flagrant foul. The NBA is reviewing the play and can upgrade it to a flagrant foul if it decides the play warrants that designation. If it is upgraded, that could have significant ramifications on the rest of the series.
When a player accumulates four flagrant foul points in a single postseason, he is automatically suspended for one game. Wembanyama currently has two flagrant foul points, both accumulated on a single play. In the second round against the , he received a flagrant-2 foul and was ejected for elbowing in the neck.
Wemby’s elbow on Naz Reid 😳
Wembanyama received a flagrant-2 and was ejected from Game 4.
If this play is upgraded to a flagrant-1, Wembanyama would be just one flagrant foul away from an automatic suspension. That would no doubt affect the physicality he is able to play with for the rest of the Finals.
While suspensions resulting from players hitting the four flagrant foul point threshold in the postseason are rare, they do happen. Most notably, was suspended for Game 5 of the 2016 NBA Finals because he accumulated four flagrant foul points throughout that postseason, culminating in his absence in a key loss to the that eventually led to the first ever 3-1 Finals comeback at Golden State’s expense.
Wembanyama’s propensity for hard fouls has come under increased scrutiny this postseason, particularly since that elbow to Reid’s neck. In Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals against the , he appeared to pull Lu Dort’s hair while running up the court.
In Game 2 of the NBA Finals, Wembanyama can be seen tossing backup point guard by the neck while fighting for rebounding position following a layup attempt.
Wemby didn’t like Jose Alvarado boxing him out 😂
If the play is indeed upgraded to a flagrant 1, Wembanyama will have to be cautious for the rest of the series because the cannot afford his absence for a full game. Though the Spurs went 12-6 in the regular season without Wembanyama and they won Game 3 of their first-round series against the without him, things have only gotten harder as the competition has improved deeper into the postseason.
When Wembanyama was ejected against Minnesota, the Spurs lost Game 4 to the Timberwolves. He has not missed a game in the last two rounds, but the minutes that he rests have become very precarious. In the Western Conference Finals, the Spurs were outscored by 38 points with on the floor. Thus far in the NBA Finals, the Knicks have won Kornet’s minutes by 17 points.
Beyond even backup center, the Spurs only seem to fully trust six players in this series: Wembanyama, , , Dylan Harper, and . Removing Wembanyama from the equation due to a suspension would force San Antonio to lean even more heavily into bench players who have lost prominence as the postseason has progressed.
Though he was focused more on the free-throw disparity, Knicks coach Mike Brown with the officials following New York’s Game 3 loss. “I never thought I would be in the NBA Finals and see a team get 24 free-throw attempts in the second half to another team’s eight,” Brown said Monday night.
When asked about the shove that has since been upgraded into a flagrant foul, Jalen Brunson refused to add fuel to the fire. “Whatever you saw is what you saw,” he said.
Now the two sides await a verdict on Wembanyama’s shove, and if it is indeed changed, it wouldn’t be the first call from this series to get that treatment. Game 2 technical foul, received for a bit of shoving with Wembanyama, was rescinded on Saturday. A change here would be far more consequential. The NBA has already admitted that a foul of some sort should have been called, but if that foul is flagrant, it will linger over the entire rest of this series.
