Bickerstaff: Ref wasn't 'objective' in Pistons' loss to Mavs

Detroit Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff said a member of the officiating crew was biased against him and his players during their 116-114 overtime loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Thursday.

"A referee makes a comment to me about, 'Night by night, this is how our interactions are.' So that says to me that the referee is coming into the game not being objective," Bickerstaff said postgame, according to The Athletic's Hunter Patterson. "You look at the play, that same referee, at halftime I get my technical foul. I don't say anything to him. I go to grab Cade (Cunningham) to get Cade off the floor. He gives me a technical foul.

"That's my job to get my player away from the referee, get us back to halftime so we can have the conversations that we need to have. So the same referee who comes into the game as not objective, and then he goes out and makes those calls."

Bickerstaff did not name the referee in question, but the interactions he mentioned involved John Goble, the crew chief for Thursday's matchup.

In the halftime incident involving Cunningham, the Pistons star appeared to be finishing a conversation with official Suyash Mehta about a technical foul he received seconds earlier when Bickerstaff began to approach his star. Goble then suddenly assessed Bickerstaff a technical foul, which Cunningham initially seemed to believe was his second.

Goble told a postgame pool report that he gave Bickerstaff a tech for "continuous complaining."

Minutes earlier in the second quarter, Goble had ejected Pistons wing Ausar Thompson for "aggressively approaching and making contact with the official."

Bickerstaff said he believes Goble created the contact by stepping toward Thompson.

"That same referee, if you take a look at the play where he ejects A.T., he steps towards A.T.," Bickerstaff said. "That's where the minimal contact happens, where he steps towards him and initiates it."

The Pistons coach also took issue with Goble in the final seconds of overtime. Bickerstaff said he tried to call a timeout following an offensive rebound by Jalen Duren with 3.5 seconds remaining and Detroit down two but said Goble did not award it despite "standing next" to him.

"I want to make this clear: This game is not about the referees," Bickerstaff added. "This was a highly contested game by two really competitive teams with guys who laid it out on the line.

"But the object - it needs to be addressed with what happened on the floor tonight. You have one guy who wanted to make the game about the referees. And that's not what this should've been. ... But anybody who comes into the game and says 'Night by night,' he clearly has an unobjective point of view."