Australia's most credentialed player in the basketball league Josh Childress was ejected from the game last night for throwing an elbow and knocking a player down. In what was a very physical game the Perth wildcats demolished the Sydney Kings 84-63 but its highlight was the Childress ejection. Steve Carfino even mentioned they may need extra security with how the crowd reacted. It was a very physical game which blatantly showed how amateur the NBL refs are who were greatly influenced by the fans in Perths sold out arena. Sydney managed to get called for every foul committed but the Perth Wildcats played very physical defense and set many illegal screens with no calls from the refs. In the play where Childress was ejected Jesse Wagstaff set a big screen which Childress believed to be illegal which hit him to the ground right in front of the ref with no call coming. Immediately after Wagstaff got the ball and took a shot from the top of the keyway when Childress jumped up, elbows up and took him down. Wagstaff went down hard and the other players stopped any further fighting as Childress walked to the bench and later left the stadium as the refs made a decision. They crowd was in an uproar and booing and yelling filled the stadium as Childress walked out. The frustration was too much for Childress and hell even iv been there myself when the refs just don't call any illegal plays coming your teams way. Wagstaff is known as one of the roughest and "dirtiest" players in the league maybe following his team mate Sean Redhage. Some fans on forums think it was about time a player reacted, over-reacted definitely but maybe the refs will look at this game and try to improve, because his reaction was a directly caused by the poor refereeing.
As Jonny Flynn said they play it rough down in Australia. The NBL organization really has to take a look at the league and how its officiated if they want to keep recruiting top quality players. (Sam Young, Jonny Flynn, Josh Childress, James Ennis, Deandre Danials) Why would a fringe NBA player or former NBA player come to Australia to get beaten up on the court every night. I'm not saying what Josh Childress did was the right thing it was definitely an over reaction and he did deserve to be ejected but lets hope it makes the league take a closer look as to why a player would react the way he did and make some changes in recruiting some more professional referees.
A clip of the play can be seen below, What are your thoughts?
Jonny Flynn's Perth vs Melbourne post game interview in 2012. He said it well back then. Their a hard enough team to beat alone without those "outside influences".
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