NBA officials ruined the Warriors-Hornets game with two ridiculous technicals on Draymond Green

It was a great game … until the final 10 seconds.

Here at For The Win, we might be a bit over-protective of Draymond Green. The reason is pretty simple: He so often speaks his mind in ways that other athletes are unwilling to do.

That’s great! We want to know what athletes are actually thinking. We want them to eschew the media training their teams use to make them dull. We want them to ignore all the pressure to sound like a corporatized bot and instead speak like a human who gets to make his living playing a game, while also feeling free to share nuanced thoughts about the broader world.

Draymond does that. Thanks, Draymond.

So it won’t surprise you to know what we’re highly offended by these two very awful technical foul calls against Green late in what would become a 102-100 Golden State Warriors loss to the Charlotte Hornets.

Look, there’s no way to know exactly what Draymond Green says here — after the Hornets are awarded a timeout, somehow, during a tie-up — that may or may not have warranted this extreme reaction from the officials. If it turns out he said something untoward, I’ll take all of this back.

What I’m seeing, though, is a pretty standard and completely natural reaction to a controversial call that hurt Green’s team in the final 10 seconds of a game. It’s well within the bounds of what should be acceptable.

It should not be enough to sway the outcome of an NBA game. But it did. Green was ejected and Terry Rozier stepped up to hit two free throws to tie the game at 100.

Rozier, who would finish with 36 points on 12-of-19 shooting (8-for-11 from 3), then hit this ridiculous shot at the buzzer.

That shot should have sent it to overtime, though. That would have been fitting. This game deserved to go long.

Of course players should respect the decisions made by officials, but the people in stripes aren’t infallible. There needs to be room for players to make an argument and to disagree about split-second calls made in heated moments.

Especially if those moments come at the end of such a close game. Green can be a pest, sure, and I’m sure he talks too much on the court, but this game didn’t need to be ruined by an overzealous official looking to make a statement.

Let the players decide the games.

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