Late in the Houston Rockets‘ 120-111 loss against the Sacramento Kings on Tuesday, coach Ime Udoka let referee John Goble have it. Udoka was assessed a technical foul for complaining about what he thought were multiple uncalled fouls against Domantas Sabonis on a drive by Alperen Sengun, then got in Goble’s face, earned another technical foul and had to be held back before leaving the court. Sengun, almost as angry as his coach, also picked up a tech and got ejected.
After the game, Udoka was characteristically blunt about what had upset him.
“Missed calls,” he told reporters. “Blatant missed calls right in front of you. You’re calling ticky-tack moving screens and little shit like that, and then you don’t want to call the obvious ones right in front of you. So that was it. Alpie got fouled a few times on that drive and on the layup and they don’t want to call it, and I told him, ‘Get some f—ing glasses, open your eyes.'”
Udoka said he was not trying to show his players that he would stand up for them. He just wanted to tell Goble how he felt.
“It wasn’t even about that, honestly,” Udoka said. “Alpie got one [tech], but take your sensitivity and emotions out of it and call the game the right way. It’s obvious, right in front of you. John Goble, whoever it was, sees it, doesn’t call it. I let him know about it.”
Here’s the play that set him off:
This season, the NBA has fined Rockets guard Fred VanVleet $50,000 for “for confronting and directing profane language” at officials, fined Kings coach Mike Brown $35,000 “for aggressively pursuing a game official during live play” and fined Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers $25,000 “for public criticism of the officiating.”
Entering Tuesday’s NBA Cup game against Sacramento, Houston had won 10 of 12 games. Had the Rockets won, they would have been the only team in the Western Conference to go undefeated in group play. Houston is still moving on to the quarterfinals.
During the second quarter, the Kings’ De’Aaron Fox and the Rockets’ Dillon Brooks and Jabari Smith Jr. all picked up technical fouls. Brooks played 24 only minutes because of foul trouble and fouled out with more than four minutes remaining in the game.
