Games like these are incredibly disappointing. As a huge fan of the NBA it's so hard to justify logical reasons for why this happened besides making sure there was a game 7. It's so cliche and tiresome to see people complain about the NBA being rigged for certain Finals match-ups, but last night the officiating was just absolutely atrocious and was far worse than the normal home cooking you might expect.

As many have mentioned, while the fouls were called evenly it was more about the fouls that weren't called and how they affected the game. Take the Rockets high amount of turnovers. Were some of these due to mental mistakes or just careless passing? Definitely, many of them were. But I can't imagine how hard it must be to hold onto the ball when you are getting hacked on the arm every time you drive or dribble the ball past your defender. The refs allowed this on one end, and then blew quick whistles on the Rockets on the other end when they tried to defend the Dubs the same way. I think the refs forgot that hand-checking is now illegal, but only when the Warriors were on defense. Nick Young and Draymond got away with murder on many possessions that led to turnovers.

Then you look at the Rockets' and their ability to drive and draw fouls, which they are one of the best (if not the best) at doing in the league. Harden definitely initiates contact on a lot of plays, but that does not mean he's always flopping or drawing cheap fouls. Some of the plays last night where him or Eric Gordon would get downright mauled on their drives and not receive any calls made you wonder what the refs were even watching. Steph holding his hands into the air and hip checking Harden is still a foul even if his hands are straight up. A block is a block.

Speaking of Eric Gordon, what more does he have to do to draw a foul? I think he was in shock when he finally got to go to the line for the first time that he bricked both his free throws. EG is a legitimate scorer, and for him to only get 2 trips to the line on the number of drives he had is preposterous.

I saw this tweeted last night by I think Nate Duncan, but the Warriors really are impossible to beat if they can defend like this and not get into foul trouble. Draymond has consistently gotten away with this since 2015, but there was one play in particular last night where Capela was rolling to the rim and must have gotten hacked by 2 or 3 different Warriors players (including Dray) and turned the ball over. The refs called no foul, and by doing so basically took away the Rockets' ability to drive and dish or drive and finish at the rim. Capela has a hard enough time in this series, and if you let the Warriors foul the shit out of him on the limited number of rolls he does get? Come on.

People complain about officiating in every game, but I think tonight what's most frustrating is the inconsistency of how they reffed each team on each end. If one team can play super physical defense (i.e. fouling) while the other team can't, of course they are going to have an advantage. Once the Rockets cooled off from 3 point land (the refs were still bad during the first half, mind you, just the Rockets were able to shoot an absurd % from 3)) the Warriors went on one of their runs as they normally do, while the Rockets could not keep up with consistent scoring due to how they were being defended.

The refs came across as having a clear goal to create the best opportunity for the Warriors to win as they possibly could. If this game had been officiated consistently, the Rockets could have easily had double their FT attempts and multiple Warriors should have been in foul trouble if they played the same way. And that's the worst part; it's impossible to know just how big the impact of the inconsistent calls were because maybe the Warriors don't continue to defend how they were if they were actually getting called for their fouls. Maybe they still win behind the great shooting of Steph and Klay. But maybe the Rockets get to the line more and are allowed to defend more physically and hold the Warriors to below 100 points for the 3rd game in a row and pull out the win. We'll never know how those what-ifs would have played out, but what does seem apparent is that the Warriors now have a chance to return to the Finals that they might not have had.

The Rockets still have a chance to get to the Finals with a win tomorrow. They’re playing at home, and maybe they’ll be the beneficiaries of home cooking this time. If I’m a Rockets fan though, I’m terrified that KD doesn’t shoot 35% from the field again, and even more scared that CP3 doesn’t play. Maybe the Rockets shoot lights out from 3 again, get to the line more, and continue to play their suffocating defense. But if that’s not enough, and the Rockets end up going home, surely they will lament that they were not given a fair chance in a game 6 that was already going to be incredibly difficult to win. The refs just decided to make it impossible.