Donovan Mitchell was anything but happy after his Utah Jazz were beaten by the Philadelphia 76ers in a duel between the No. 1 seed in the East and the No. 1 seed in the West. The Sixers needed OT to beat their rivals, 131-123, in a game that wasn’t safe from controversy.
After the match was over, the guard showed his frustration with the officiating of the game. The player went off, saying that his team isn’t getting the calls that other teams are getting. He went after the league, saying that something must change for them.
Via ESPN:
“Now, I’m never ever one to blame a ref, to blame an official — I can say I could have done more — but this is getting out of hand. There have been games like this that we’ve won; there have been games like this that we’ve lost. But this whole refereeing stuff. … We’re nice, we don’t complain, like, we don’t get frustrated, we fight through things, and the fact that we continually get … screwed, in a way, by this. You know?”
“We won this game, in my personal opinion. You know?” Mitchell continued. “But like I said, I’m going to give them credit. They won. Whatever. Cool. But it’s been a consistent thing, and the question is, ‘Can we do it? Can we sustain it? Are we for real No. 1? And, yeah, the hell we are. And it’s getting f—ing ridiculous that this is what is happening.”
He did praise the Sixers for all the hard work they put in to win the game but made it clear he wasn’t happy with certain aspects of the match.
“Give the 76ers credit. They played a hard game. Joel [Embiid] did what he does, and at the end of the day, they’re a good team. We competed. But it’s tough. It’s tough to go out there and see how we fight and compete, and to have a game like that taken from us,” Mitchell said.
It was really a tense game and Donovan let everybody know. With one minute left in OT, you could see Joel Embiid trying to persuade the referees to eject him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pjJ-cQd2Yc
He took to Twitter to react to one play that was ruled an offensive foul on Ben Simmons. He just wrote a lot of points, not saying much more than that.
— Donovan Mitchell (@spidadmitchell) March 4, 2021
This was really bad in the eyes of the Jazz and it seems like plenty of fans saw the game the same way. Something needs to change after all the controversial courts we’ve seen in recent weeks. Players drawing idiotic fouls and refs falling for it; total madness.
Mitchell wants things to be fair, especially for a team that is having a great season, is still boasting the best record in the league, and have played great basketball against the best rivals in the association.
