Suns Retaliate Against Officials Following Devin Booker’s Ejection
The Phoenix Suns were not pleased with the way their finest player was benched.
Phoenix: Devin Booker, a guard for the Phoenix Suns, participated in the most of the game until being sent off in yesterday night’s victory over the Detroit Pistons.
Due to remarks he made toward officials, Booker was given two technical fouls and was removed from the game.
In the process, Suns coach Frank Vogel—who was understandably furious—also picked up a technical foul.
“They just said they asked him to stop whatever his complaint was and they (gave Booker a technical foul) and then he said something else to the other official and they ran him out,” Vogel said following the game (thanks to Duane Rankin
“Absolutely absurd. Taking the star player out of the game was pure nonsense. I’ve witnessed worse than he did every single night. Not that; I see it every night, and I have seen it before. Never before seen.”
Before the game even started, Isaiah Stewart and Drew Eubanks got into a fight in the stadium, which made for an unusual start to the evening.
Kevin Durant of the Suns thinks the officials were attempting to make up for their mistake.
“I guess he said something that ticked the ref off, but they were on edge before the game anyway because of the situation,” added Durant.
The officials didn’t want things to go out of hand because they believed that things may get out of hand between our squad and theirs, but that isn’t even the kind of team we are. We simply want to get out there and use our game to communicate. You were aware of it right away. All they were attempting to do was inform us that they would be in charge of the game. That makes sense to me. I understand their viewpoint, but I just believe that both of them made a tech move that was too rapid.”
After the game, pool reporter Kellan Olson met with the officials, who maintained that the pre-game activities had no bearing on the call of play during the game.
“Those are good officials that were on the game tonight, but that was certainly uncalled for and BS,” Vogel stated.
