Damian Lillard Sounds Off On Missed Goaltending Call in Final Seconds of Utah Loss
Written by SOURCE on February 8, 2020
Damian Lillard and several of his Blazers teammates were extremely pissed off on Friday night after the refs officiating their game against the Jazz (which they eventually lost 117-114) missed a goaltend at the end of that contest.
Footage of that goaltend was retweeted by Lillard amidst a flurry of supportive messages that Dame also added to his timeline. For context, the not-quite-official-infraction was committed by Utah’s Rudy Gobert with 11.2 seconds in the game. If properly called it would’ve made things even at 116.
Here, check it out:
“We get to the last play of the game, and they miss an easy call,” Lillard said afterward. “And then they tell us that’s an easy no-call, like that was obviously not a goaltend. Cost us a fucking game, man. Cost us a game.”
Despite whatever explanations the refs gave Lillard and his team, crew chief Josh Tiven later told a pool reporter that the sequence was botched.
“We’ve since looked at it via postgame video review and unfortunately saw that we missed the play, and a goaltending violation should have been called,” said Tiven, according to the pool report.
“Three referees out there, and they don’t call that. I don’t wanna see no report about, ‘Oh, we should’ve called it’ or none of that,” Lillard added. “They cost us the game. We in a playoff race, and they cost us the game on an easy call.”
Lillard also echoed that statement afterward from his Twitter account, while making it clear that he was unconcerned about any resulting fine for doing so.
On the night, the Portland star scored 42 points, which seemed to be of little consolation to him.
“There ain’t no way to take the sting out of it,” Lillard said, according to ESPN. “We can’t have the game back. They cost us the game. It’s a loss on our record. We in the playoff race and we need every game we can get and we had that type of effort, and they missed an easy call like that. And then you want us to walk away and say nothing. Cost us the game. Of course we gonna have something to say about it. Man, that’s B.S.”
You can watch Lillard’s comments, in addition to similar sentiments from coach Terry Stotts and teammate C.J. McCollum, below:
