Devin Booker calls officiating “bad for the integrity of the sport”

It was a competitive, physical Game 2 between the Phoenix Suns and the Oklahoma City Thunder, as most postseason battles are. And when you get two teams with a reputation for an aggressive style of play, the officials sometimes jump the gun on attempting to regulate it. We witnessed this early on Wednesday night when Dillon Brooks and Lu Dort were given double technical fouls during a box out on a made free throw.

Yeah. There wasn’t much there. But this wasn’t an isolated occurrence. There were multiple calls throughout the game that felt off, confusing in the moment and even more confusing after the explanation. It got to the point where Devin Booker addressed it postgame. He called out the officiating crew, knowing what comes with that. A fine is coming. He said it anyway. The official at the center of it was James Williams.

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The first play he referenced was the technical foul assessed to Booker with 2:05 left in the third quarter. Booker was driving left above the break toward the corner when Jaylen Williams bumped him off his path. Booker was headed out of bounds and flipped the ball back in, trying to save the possession. It hit Williams. After a crowd formed around the official, a technical was called.

When asked if he had received an explanation of the play, Booker responded, “I still haven’t got one.”

“It’s definitely something that has to be looked into,” he continued. “I heard Caruso tell him to call the tech and, you know, he ended up doing it.”

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Then there was the earlier offensive foul assessed at the 2:31 mark of the second. Booker rose for a jumper with Alex Caruso on him. It looked like a normal shooting motion, but his elbow made slight contact with Caruso’s face. Caruso went down, the whistle came, offensive foul. Jordan Ott challenged it. The call stood. It felt like marginal contact, the kind you see on jump shots all the time, with no change in motion and no added force.

That added to the frustration.

“[The officials] said ‘unnatural shooting motion’ that hit Caruso, ” Booker said of the play. “But Caruso is moving forward on that. And if…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/devin-booker-calls-officiating-bad-061344635.html

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Publish date : 2026-04-23 06:13:00

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