South East Melbourne Phoenix coach Josh King left Perth frustrated for a third time, but on this occasion he felt the officiating ruined the opening NBL finals game – and his co-captain agreed.
The NBL finals opened at the Perth High Performance Centre on Tuesday night, with RAC Arena unavailable, with the Wildcats beating the Phoenix 122-105.
South East Melbourne now hosts the winner of Thursday's match up between Sydney and Adelaide while the Wildcats advance to a playoff series with Melbourne United.
Usually such a scoreline would equal an exciting game, but it wasn't necessarily the case given of the 227 points, 66 came at the foul line with 77 free throws attempted between the two teams.
After King's first two games coaching South East Melbourne in Perth, the Wildcats had taken 50 free throws to just 21 from the Phoenix, but this time it was seemingly a whistle on each position.
The 'Cats went 39-of-42 and the Phoenix 27-of-35. King didn't feel it impacted the result, he just didn't enjoy being part of it.
"I'm not here to get fined, I'm just here to tell you that there were a lot of fouls called in that game and it wasn't fun to watch or to be part of," he said.
"I literally was bored from watching so many free throws being shot, I'm exhausted.
"You've gotta let the guys play, man. Every single time down they were shooting free throws and we were shooting free throws.
"It was both sides, it was just foul, foul, foul. I don't know I've ever been part of a playoff game like that."
Phoenix centre Hunter was limited to less than 13 minutes because of constant foul trouble and he couldn't hide his frustrations either.
"I don't know who that's for, it's not for us because we're not having fun and neither is anyone watching," he said.
"This is the best part of the season right now, everyone is geeked up and excited to get out there and it was just standing there for free-throw blackouts for three hours.
"It turns into everyone trying to manage quarter to quarter what they're doing instead of what people want to watch, what coaches want to coach and what players want to play.
"You don't want to talk too much to it because there won't be any accountability for it and we have a big game coming up and don't want to find out that way either."
Wildcats coach John Rillie was of a different mindset.
He knew the Phoenix are a high fouling team and was happy with the adjustments his team made to only send their opponents to the line 14 times in the second half after 21 in the first.
"I want us to have an aggressive attacking mindset to put the pressure on and they fouled the second most in the competition throughout the regular season, and we got to the foul line the second most," Rillie pointed out.
"Let's not get lost in the miniature of the numbers, some things work out the way they are supposed to work out."
