Montrezl Harrell got a laughable technical foul for yelling 'and-1'
It wasn't a banner night for NBA officiating on Wednesday. While the Utah Jazz's Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert laid down petty, expletive-laden rants about how there's a grand conspiracy to keep small market teams down because they're not getting the calls they want, Montrezl Harrell and the Los Angeles Lakers had an actual, legitimate gripe with the refs in their 123-120 loss to the Sacramento Kings.
Yelling 'and-1' is apparently a technical foul now
Harrell was the victim of some soft refereeing on Wednesday night when he was given a technical with 10:51 left in the second quarter. After scoring on a layup, he yelled "and-1" because he thought he'd been fouled. Yelling "and-1" is a tradition in today's NBA — it's done all the time and it usually results in nothing.
It didn't result in nothing this time. Referee Jenna Schroeder apparently took offense to hearing something she's probably heard hundreds of times in her career, and gave Harrell a technical. In the video clip, you can see just how flabbergasted Harrell is to receive a technical on something as normal as yelling "and-1."
NBA refs back at it again with Lakers games.
Montrezl Harrell yelled "and one" after a shot and Trezz got a technical foul -_- pic.twitter.com/AE7aH9m9E1— LakeShow Highlights (@LA_HighLights24) March 4, 2021
Harrell hadn't cooled off about it when he spoke with the media after the game. Via Silver Screen and Roll:
“I’m not looking at her (during the play), I was not near her vicinity, I’m running back on defense, and what I said was ‘and-1.’ No cursing, no profanity, none of that. And she turned around and gave me a tech because she was in her feelings. Because she felt like I was too loud with her or I belittled her when I was talking,” Harrell continued. “You can’t bring that into the game. I don’t care who it is, I don’t care what the situation is, man. Like everybody on the bench, everybody in the arena, even the guy sitting at the scorer’s table said you can’t do that. You can’t give a guy a tech for saying ‘and-1.’
“If I’m going to get a tech for saying and-1, man, then they might as well just tech me up all year, man, because I’ve said way worse than that and haven’t been given a tech. So it is what it is, man. I can’t control that. I’m gonna keep playing with the same passion and pride that I do. I didn’t stop talking the rest of the game, I kept playing with the same fire and same motor that I have all game. So it just is what it is.”
Harrell is probably looking at a pretty juicy fine for those comments, but it's hard to blame him for being salty. All he did was yell "and-1," something players do all the time. That simply can't be worth a technical foul. If it is now, we're going to be seeing an incomprehensible number of technicals assessed around the league, and nobody wants to see that kind of basketball.
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