NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Knicks coach Mike Brown criticized the officiating in Game 3 of the NBA Finals after the San Antonio Spurs shot 24 free throws in the second half to New York’s eight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never thought I\u2019d see that in an NBA Finals game, and I saw it tonight,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
The Spurs won 115-111 on Monday night to cut the Knicks’ lead in the series to 2-1. It was New York’s first loss in 46 days, ending a 13-game postseason winning streak.<\/p>\n
Brown credited the Spurs for their performance and listed some things the Knicks did poorly. But he said the officiating made a difference in the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cSan Antonio is a great team. They are a great team, OK. It\u2019s going to lower our odds big time, big time, if we play Game 4 and in the second half, they get 24 free-throw attempts to our eight. Maybe we were fouling. Maybe we were fouling. But they fouled, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were a lot of things that we didn\u2019t do that we did in Game 1 and Game 2,\u201d Brown added. \u201cBut to go 24 free-throw attempts in the second half, that\u2019s 48 for the game, if you think about the way they called that second half, compared to eight. All the shots we took, we got fouled four times, roughly, for eight free-throw attempts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mikal Bridges had to go to the bench early after picking up two quick fouls and Jalen Brunson had to do the same in the third quarter when he picked up his fourth. The Spurs shot 14 free throws in the third quarter to the Knicks’ three.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of things we can do better and we are going to have to do better, but the same breath, like I said, hopefully they will see some more fouls called against them, so it\u2019s not 24-8,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThis is a four-point ballgame. Four-point ballgame. One-possession ballgame going down the stretch. It\u2019s tough to overcome.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Spurs finished 25 for 32 for the game, while the Knicks were 18 for 22. Told about Brown’s comments, Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns said the referees weren’t the problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat didn\u2019t cost us the game,\u201d he said. \u201cTurned the ball over. Didn\u2019t execute. Didn\u2019t do what got us 13 straight wins in a row. That\u2019s how you lose a game.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/NBA<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Knicks coach Mike Brown criticized the officiating in Game 3 of the NBA Finals after the San Antonio Spurs shot 24 free throws in the second half to New York’s eight. \u201cI never thought I\u2019d see that in an NBA Finals game, and I saw it tonight,\u201d Brown said. The Spurs … Continue reading Knicks coach on free throw disparity in Game 3: ‘Never thought I\u2019d see that in an NBA Finals game’<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1452],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1514077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-06-11 03:18:39","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[0],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1514077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1514078,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514077\/revisions\/1514078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1514077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1514077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1514077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}