Sophia Michaels
A common thread across all sports at all levels is a general frustration with officiating. This is typically because officials are asked to be the lone perfect humans on the court at any given time, which isn’t possible, and factors that effect the game outside the control of the players on the floor always lead to more anger than mistakes made by the players.
At the highest levels, there are, at least in theory, the very best officials which means the further you get from the top professional leagues the more, well, human the officials will be. On Sunday night in the G League, the officiating was, in the eyes of Wisconsin Herd coach Chase Buford, so bad that he decided to let off an all-time postgame rant in which he called one of the officials a “f*cking clown” and said the officiating overall was “biased and unfair and illegal and cheating,” in favor of the Grand Rapids Drive — who overcame a 21-point deficit to beat the Herd.
Early candidate for coaching rant of the year! Wisconsin Herd Head Coach Chase Buford after his team saw a 21-point lead disappear in the 4th quarter vs. Grand Rapids. And because he asked: @nbagleague pic.twitter.com/cw5t1lMSKI
— Ryan Rodig (@ryanrodigwfrv) February 24, 2020
In a shocking turn of events, this didn’t go over especially well with the league and the Herd organization — which is the Milwaukee Bucks G League affiliate — and shortly after both the team and Buford issued statements, with the coach apologizing to the referee he called a clown and saying he was ashamed and embarrassed.
I’m not sure what the standard fine is for a G League coach, but one would think that will be coming his way shortly and, possibly, some kind of suspension. This is one of those times where he probably needed to cool off just a little bit more before talking to the assembled media after his team blew a massive lead.
Written by: Uproxx
