It smelled of outright tanking — Draymond Green said as much after the game. Wednesday night, the Kings had a slim 101-100 lead with 3:15 remaining in the game when head coach Doug Christie motioned to his team to intentionally foul career 86.4% free-throw shooter Seth Curry off the ball, even though the Warriors were already in the bonus.
The NBA investigated and concluded that the Kings were not tanking, they were just inept. The Kings had three timeouts left and would have lost one at the 3:00 mark (teams can only call two timeouts in the final three minutes), and Christie is a coach well known for taking that timeout to avoid losing it. However, he just forgot or didn’t know the Warriors were in the bonus. Here is the league’s statement.
“The league’s investigation determined that Christie mistakenly believed that the Warriors were not in the penalty and therefore instructed his team to foul in an attempt to stop the clock and utilize one of the team’s remaining timeouts. The investigation found that Christie made no intentional effort to give the Warriors a shooting foul, or to cause the Kings to lose the game.”
Curry made one of two and tied the game from the free-throw line. On its next possession, the Kings retook the lead, but ultimately lost the game 110-105.
Multiple league sources told NBC Sports that Christie is one of the coaches expected to be let go by their teams after the season.
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