Knicks' Mike Brown criticizes free throw disparity in Game 3 loss - ESPN

NEW YORK — Knicks coach Mike Brown credited the San Antonio Spurs for winning Game 3 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden to climb back into the best-of-seven series. He did not extend the same pleasantries to the officials.

Brown pointed the finger at the stat sheet, which showed the Spurs taking three times as many free throws as the Knicks in the second half as San Antonio escaped with a 115-111 win Monday night to cut New York's lead to 2-1.

The Knicks were in the penalty for the final 9:18 of the fourth quarter, and the Spurs held a 24-8 advantage in free throw attempts.

«I talked to [the officials]. They outshot us 14-3 in the third quarter from the free throw line. I talked to them, and they said, well, this is a foul, this is a foul,» Brown said. «That's the question I had with them is, you're right. Maybe we did foul. But they fouled, too.»

Brown hammered the point home a few times in his postgame news conference, clearly wanting the officiating to be part of the discussion before Wednesday's Game 4.

«It's going to be that because I said it. The story is going to be there,» Brown said. «But there are some controllables that we did not do a good job of doing. We allowed them to hit first at the beginning of the game. We allowed them to hit first in the beginning of the second half.

»We turned the ball over and we were stagnant offensively and we allowed them to get to the paint, and we did not pay attention to detail to what we are supposed to do defensively."

The loss was the Knicks' first in almost two months, snapping a 13-game playoff winning streak. For the first time since the 1993 Finals, the road team won the first three games of the series.

New York's players didn't use the officiating as an