San Antonio Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson was ticked off.
A charge had just been called on Luke Kornet. Johnson thought the refs were wrong. So as he called a timeout to challenge the call, Johnson also gave the refs a piece of his mind.
What came next was this:
- The refs overturned the call, giving the Spurs the ball.
- The refs gave Johnson a technical foul.
So he got punished for arguing a point that he was then proven correct about.
That seems wrong.
Jalen Brunson did miss the technical free throw for the Knicks, so the ball didn't lie.
But it's still an odd concept. Amazon Prime Video's color commentator Stan Van Gundy, himself a former NBA coach, said that the tech should be rescinded if the challenge overturns the call.
He's got a point.
It always felt a bit off for a coach to get a tech when replay shows the coach to be correct, even before challenges.
Now that the refs can go over and actually change the call, it feels even worse.
Clearly, a coach could still cross a line. But there's gotta be some leeway if the refs turned out to be wrong after all.
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