NBA Rescinds Mitchell Robinson Tech in Game 2 Loss to Spurs. Wembanyama Got the Call That Mattered
The NBA admitted on Saturday what every Knicks fan watching Game 2 already knew. The Mitchell Robinson technical foul was the wrong call.
The league announced it was rescinding the tech given to the Knicks center in the second quarter of Friday’s Finals Game 2 at Frost Bank Center. The decision came after the standard postgame review.
That is the official version. The unofficial version is that the NBA blew the call, gave Victor Wembanyama a free point, and the Spurs lost by one. Funny how that works.
The play itself was a tame shoving match between Robinson and Wembanyama. There was no haymaker. There was no actual escalation. Both bigs got into each other on a screen, jawed for a second, and the officials gave Robinson a technical. Wembanyama did not get one. That part was always the problem.
If you call a tech on a shoving match, you call it both ways. You either give both players a tech, or you give nobody a tech. Giving only one of the two participants a tech makes zero sense, especially when the player who did not get the tech is the one who shot the free throw.
Wembanyama made the technical. The Spurs lost 105-104. The math is not complicated.
This is the second straight Finals game where officiating became the story. Game 1 had its own foul disparity issues. Now Game 2 has an official rescind on a play that directly affected the final margin. The league office is not going to enjoy the next few days of media coverage on this.
The kicker is what happened to Wembanyama in the final minute anyway. The Spurs star had the ball with under 30 seconds and turned it over, giving the Knicks a chance to take the lead. Jalen Brunson hit a go-ahead free throw with 9.5 seconds left. Then Wembanyama got the ball back with a chance to win the game and missed the jumper at the buzzer.
That is two season-defining mistakes from the player San Antonio is built around. The 22-year-old phenom has been brilliant for most of these playoffs, but Finals basketball is a different animal. The pressure on Wembanyama Monday at MSG is going to be massive.
The Spurs are down 2-0 and headed to New York for Games 3 and 4. The 0-3 cliff is right in front of them. No team in NBA history has come back from down 3-0 in a best-of-seven series. The franchise that Robinson just lost to was on the wrong end of a 1999 Finals against the Spurs, the last time the Knicks made the championship round. The Karma police are circling.
Mike Brown has a coaching problem now. Wembanyama has not shaken the Knicks’ switching defense. Chris Paul, the veteran point guard, has had quiet possessions for stretches. Devin Vassell’s playoff knee injury keeps hurting San Antonio’s spacing.
The NBA can rescind the tech, but they cannot rescind the loss. A 2-0 deficit in the Finals is almost always fatal. The Spurs need a Wembanyama show on the road in front of a hostile crowd. History says it is unlikely. The phenom’s career path says do not bet against him yet.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
