LeBron James walked out of his post-game press conference after hitting out at officiating in the NBA following the Los Angeles Lakers’ Game 2 defeat to the Denver Nuggets on Monday.
The Lakers surrendered a 20-point lead in a thrilling second matchup at Ball Arena, with Jamal Murray sinking a buzzer-beating 15-footer to hand the Nuggets a dramatic 101-99 win.
With James adding 26 points in support of Anthony Davis’ 32, Los Angeles had led 68-48 two minutes into the second half, and their advantage still stood at 10 points going into the fourth quarter.
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After the game, James zeroed in on an incident which took place in the third quarter, when Michael Porter Jr. was called for a shooting foul on D’Angelo Russell, only for the decision to be overturned when Denver coach Michael Malone challenged.
Also referencing the controversial end to the Philadelphia 76ers’ defeat to the New York Knicks, James hit out at replay center officials after the game.
“I don’t understand what’s going on in the replay center, to be honest,” the NBA’s all-time leading scorer said.
“D-Lo clearly gets hit in the face on a drive. What the **** do we have a replay center for if it’s going to go like that? It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“It makes no sense to me. It bothers me. Then I just saw what happened with the Sixers-Knicks game, too. Like, what are we doing?”
The Sixers were also enraged by the officials on Monday, claiming they were denied both a foul and a timeout in the build-up to Donte DiVincenzo’s game-winning 3-pointer.
Heartbreaker pic.twitter.com/E4pf5SPq0T
— Los Angeles Lakers (@Lakers) April 23, 2024
For Denver, Murray was one of five players in double figures, his 20 points coming in support of Nikola Jokic – who had a triple-double with 27 points, 20 rebounds and 10 assists.
Having missed with 13 of his first 16 shots, Murray credited his team-mates for keeping him on track after stretching the Nuggets’ advantage in the series.
“I just lost my balance and fell. I think A.D. was in my way or somebody was in my way and I just heard everybody scream and that’s how I knew it went in,” Murray said of the decisive shot.
“I told my team-mates when I was struggling, ‘I’m going to look for y’all,’ and every single one of them told me to keep shooting.
“They told me to stay aggressive and keep looking for it, to keep hunting, and when I had the ball with two seconds left, I knew once I had made a couple, the next one should go down as well.”
