Although he scored 23 points and grabbed 10 rebounds to lead the Indiana Pacers past the Brooklyn Nets on Friday, Paul George was angry after the game. Frustrated by the officiating, in his postgame interview George openly complained about "the stripes" and even dropped a curse word to really drive home his point.
“The stripes was terrible,” George said. “Hopefully the league does a better job looking at s*** like this.”
On Saturday, the NBA fined him $35,000 "for public criticism of officiating and using profanity in a live television interview," the league announced.
Here is video of George's short postgame rant:
Paul George goes OFF on the refs. (NSFW Language) https://t.co/wG9vRAE6fI
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) December 19, 2015
It is unclear what calls George was unhappy with. The Pacers took 26 free throws while the Nets shot 17. George also got to the line eight times all by himself. The Nets also were called for 21 fouls while the Pacers finished the game with 15.
George was fined $10,000 in late October after he said the Pacers got a lot of "bad calls" in a loss against the Raptors. Simply saying "bad calls" earned him a $10K fine, so it's not surprising that George ended up paying an even larger one for his Friday night complaint about the officials. The NBA doesn't like it when players complain about officiating and they also don't like it when their players curse on live television.
