Kyrie Irving was no doubt as unhappy with the officiating as LeBron James. But only James really expressed his frustration after the Cavs surrendered a 26-point 4th quarter lead to the Atlanta Hawks to lose in OT. James told reporters that on one critical call — James tried to call timeout and was ignored — referee Leroy Richardson gave him “an explanation I never heard in my 14-year career.” (Richardson said he wasn’t sure who had possession, so James wasn’t allowed to call timeout.)
Irving, who actually had the ball on the play in question, used a trick to criticize the referees afterwards — he did it by refusing to criticize the referees. In the legal world, Irving’s technique closely resembles something called Adverse Inference, which is “a legal situation in which silence or refusal to cooperate is taken as a suggestion that wrongdoing occurred and someone tried to cover it up.” By admitting that his silence has been bought by potential league fines, Irving essentially says the officiating was bad, but he doesn’t want his saying so to cost him money. It’s an implicit criticism that casts the same aspersions on the officiating as the kind of overt criticism that gets players fined. And you thought Irving was only hard to cover if you were an opposing point guard! Here’s Irving on the calls:
“How much is the fine for talking about the refs?” Irving asked, per Vardon. “It’s like 50, 25? [That’s in thousands, btw.] Not worth it. Not worth it, so sorry. I had some good conversation with the refs. Just a few plays that didn’t go our way.”
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