Knicks Fall Victim to Another Questionable Call vs. Rockets

Houston, the New York Knicks have more problems with officiating.

Another Knicks visit to Space City was marred by a questionable whistle: while this tweet wasn’t as costly as the last, the Knicks were left perplexed by a charge against Josh Hart en route to their 109-97 loss to the hosting Houston Rockets on Monday night.

Hart was charged with a foul when he tried to swipe yet another rebound from Alperen Sengun with 2:45 remaining in regulation. After the foul was called, MSG Network audio caught Hart remarking that “y’all can’t cheat this bad.” (h/t Talkin’ Knicks on X) In the aftermath, head coach Tom Thibodeau was equally perturbed by the call, which indirectly led to a permanent momentum shift.

“I thought the big play was Josh’s foul. It looked like a clean steal to me. Sometimes, it goes your way; sometimes, it doesn’t,” Thibodeau said, per Stefan Bondy of the New York Post. “I thought Josh beat him to the ball. It just didn’t go our way, I guess.” 

“I thought I got it clean. I haven’t seen the replay of it,” Hart added (h/t New York Basketbal on X). “At the end of the day refs are going to make mistakes. We didn’t agree with a lot of the calls that they had. There was some that they missed, we let that dictate our energy level.”

At the time of Hart’s foul, the Knicks (3-3) were down 98-95 and had sliced a 15-point deficit to as little as one. Houston, however, embarked on an 11-2 run to close things out, dealing New York its first loss on this four-game road trip.

The Knicks lost their prior trip to Houston in February when Jalen Brunson was called for a three-shot foul when Aaron Holiday attempted to break a 103-all tie in the dying seconds. Officials, as well as the ensuing Last 2 Minute Report from that game later ruled that no foul should have been called, but Holiday nonetheless sank the winning singles, leading to a futile protest from the Knicks to have he call reversed and enforce an overtime period.

But even beyond the officiating, the Knicks had their share of obvious issues in Monday’s game: they shot less than 39 percent from the field and struggled to stop Sengun, who had 24 points and 15 rebounds. Ten tallies alone came in the final period to keep the New York comeback pacified. To drive that point home, the Knicks, in fact, won the free throw attempt battle 21-18 even though their on-court behavior yearned for more.

Their true issues lingered in the interior, where they allowed 62 points in the paint and lost the rebounding battle for the first time since opening night in Boston. The minus-11 margin was the Knicks’ worst since April and Karl-Anthony Towns had nearly half of their final output of 39 with 19.

“The whistle didn’t go our way,” Thibodeau said in another report from Bondy. “You’ve got to play through that, get past that, and find a way to win in the end,”

The Knicks’ first chance at redemption lands on Wednesday when the ongoing road trip closes in Atlanta (7:30 p.m. ET, MSG).

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