After his team fell down 2-0 to the defending champs, Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick wasn’t hiding his frustration with the officiating.
And one of his biggest issues was with the treatment of LeBron James.
“Lebron has the worst whistle of any star player I’ve ever seen,” Redick told reporters after Thursday’s 125-107 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 2. “… There’s smaller guys, because they can be theatric, they typically draw more fouls. And the bigger players that are built with LeBron, it’s hard for them.
“Then he gets clobbered, and he got clobbered again tonight a bunch. That’s not a new thing. That’s not specific to this crew or this series. He gets fouled a lot, it doesn’t happen. The guy gets hit in the head more than any player I’ve seen on drives, and it rarely gets called.”
The 41-year-old James has attempted just five free throws through the first two games of the series.
Unlike his coach, James did not voice his displeasure with the officiating when given the chance.
“We’re down 2-0,” James responded when asked by ESPN’s Dave McMenamin if the officials had any impact on Game 2.
As far as whether or not he agreed with Redick’s assessment that he has the worst whistle of any superstar?
“I don’t know,” James said.
It was a frustrating night overall for the Lakers, and Redick received a technical foul in the first half of Thursday’s game for expressing his displeasure with a missed call.
“They’re hard enough to play,” Redick said after the game. “You’ve got to be able to just call it, if they foul, and they do foul.”
A number of Lakers players gathered around the referees at midcourt after the game and Austin Reaves voiced his frustration to crew chief John Goble. He felt that while players were jockeying for position during a jump ball during the game, Goble crossed the line.
“At the end of the day, we’re grown men and I just didn’t feel like he needed to yell in my face like that,” Reaves said. “I told him that. I wasn’t disrespectful. I told him if I did that to him first, I would’ve gotten a tech. I feel like the only reason I didn’t get a tech was because he knew he was in the wrong. I felt disrespected.”
Redick and the Lakers will have to wait and see if any of their lobbying leads to any changes in the officiating as the series shifts to L.A. for Games 3 and 4.
— With files from the Associated Press
