Houston Rockets: Team should not let Scott Foster dictate the narrative

The Houston Rockets will take on the Golden State Warriors tonight in Game 2 and the referees will be headlining the matchup. What’s going on? Let’s look.

The Houston Rockets will re-commence the heavily-spirited battle between them and the Golden State Warriors tonight and what will headline this matchup is surprisingly not the teams that will be participating.

Wait…what?!?

Yes, it’s the referees that will take center stage as the number of complaints that have been made against their job performance by the Houston Rockets has been highly regarded as a love-hate relationship, mostly hate.

In Game 1, there was a multitude of missed calls, particularly with James Harden and how his defenders were invading his landing space. There countless occasions where I’d see Klay Thompson or Draymond Green jump into the space that Harden jumped from to see if they could either make him create some contact or to have him shoot off-balance.

The end result could be dangerous as the plan could backfire and I’d hate to see somebody ankle get rolled because some defender wants to get dirty with their style of defense.

In waning seconds of Game 1 the same situation was taking place between Harden and Green but in the NBA’s Last Two Minute Report, the NBA declared that the call was correct in no penalization for either player.

The most controversial non-call was the one committed by Stephen Curry with just a few ticks left in the game on Eric Gordon. The NBA ruled that it was the correct call but it was one that boiled Chris Paul‘s emotion over the edge and caused him to get his second technical, which is an automatic ejection from the game.

He was fiery the whole game and at that point, he felt that he had enough.

CP3 and Mike D’Antoni are currently appealing the decision are trying to have the call rescinded.

In addition, do you remember when Harden stepped out of bounds with 1:09 left? Yep, Curry had fouled him and the league ruled that it should’ve been called.

All of what went down was extremely frustrating to watch but to be honest, the Houston Rockets weren’t moving the basketball all that well, they were shooting it just as badly and they amazingly found a way to stay within striking distance, not allowing the Warriors to take a lead of more than nine points.

But now all of that has gotten off my chest, the Houston Rockets must trudge forward and try to steal this game tonight up at the Oracle.

Scott Foster, one of the Houston Rockets biggest arch-rivals, will be the crew chief tonight of the team of referees.

There’s a lot of history between these two and it’s important to note that Houston Rockets are 0-6 in the playoffs with Foster officiating and Paul is 0-8 when Foster is at the helm.

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Foster, who has been an NBA referee for 25 seasons, officiated the Western Conference Finals Game 7 last season and the Rockets were able to do an internal audit of that game shortly thereafter.

Their research indicated that Foster cost them 18 points off incorrect/no-calls in that game. The Rockets ended falling to the Warriors 101-92 as well as the series 4-3, clearing the path for the Warriors to the first back-to-back championship since 2012-13 when the Miami Heat completed that feat.

All in all, the Rockets need to not let Foster — or any of the referees for that matter — dictate their outcome.

It’s in their hands because they’re not going to always have the luxury of being shoot below 30 percent from the three-point, keep their turnovers low and get to the line on a regular basis. They just need to hit their shots and keep that ball moving. I can’t stress enough that they need to rim-protect as well. Green, Kevin Durant and Andre Iguodala were eating their lunch in that regard and I really think that’ll shore things up.

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We’ll have to keep our eyes open for what’s about to happen to which I’m sure is going to be game induced full of fireworks.

Let’s go Rockets!

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