Irving: "I was defending James"

[redseat]

This is a good point.

One of the things about the "old-school mentality" of protecting your teammates was that refs allowed you to protect your teammates back then.

With the way the game is officiated today, will the NBA and its refs allow this kind of toughness to come back to the game?

Especially with the over-dramatic bullshit flopping already so prevalent in the league.

I can already see a scrub off the bench give LeBron a hard foul and then go flinging himself into the third row when Kyrie gives him a hard foul in return.

Yeah, players are going to get hurt! and it will certainly lead to more scrubs coming off the bench for that sole reason

 

[knowyourenemy]

This is a good point.

One of the things about the "old-school mentality" of protecting your teammates was that refs allowed you to protect your teammates back then.

With the way the game is officiated today, will the NBA and its refs allow this kind of toughness to come back to the game?

Especially with the over-dramatic bullshit flopping already so prevalent in the league.

I can already see a scrub off the bench give LeBron a hard foul and then go flinging himself into the third row when Kyrie gives him a hard foul in return.

The thing is -- Justin Anderson didn't foul LeBron. They were running to the same exact point, LeBron had his head turned for whatever reason, and they bumped into each other and LeBron either flopped or lost his footing. It seems to happen to him a lot.

Irving then gets out-hustled for the rebound by Anderson like 10 seconds later and he then decides to do something about it. But I mean -- whatever he has to do to try to light a fire under the Cavaliers. They had lost 3 in a row heading into that game and he didn't seem to like that the Justin Anderson wasn't just rolling over for the King.

But defending LeBron? Cut it out. Complete nonsense.