NBA hits Kevin Durant with retroactive technical foul for 'taunting' during Game 3
The NBA had a busy night of tape review after Thursday night's Thunder-Mavericks and Warriors-Rockets matchups. Now, it's doling out retroactive judgements wholesale.
The biggest bombshell was the league judging James Harden's last-second game-winner over Golden State an illegal push-off - - a call that, had it occurred during regulation - - literally would've been the difference between winning and losing for Golden State.
So that's the big one, but now word has come about another ruling the NBA has made that's less immediately damaging, but much more weird.
On Friday, ESPN's Royce Jones reported that the NBA has assessed a retroactive technical foul for taunting during the third quarter of Game 3 against the Mavericks.
It's unclear what the exact taunt was in this case, or who the NBA deemed to be the victim. But as Rick Carlisle said on Friday, the optics of this series aren't looking great for Oklahoma City.
Carlisle expressed his disappointment in Durant for jamming an elbow into Salah Mejri's ribs away from the ball during the game - - which Durant definitely did.
So now Durant gains another technical, which, fortunately for the Thunder, won't shake out into larger consequences. Durant's sitting at nine techs for the season, well below the 16 required to inititate an automatic one-game suspension.
Dan is on Twitter. Retroactive foul calls: helping a couple weird NBA execs sleep better, or something.
