ClutchFans Game Thread: Rockets @ Nuggets 12/15/2025

It was technically a foul on Amen so people have to separate that from should it be called?! He caused someone to trip on an inbounds call, leaving them 4-to-5 for a bit. To me it’s a play on and guaranteed it made a difference that it was a 1-point game.

 

Go back in this thread and read the rules regarding tripping files. It was not technically a tripping file. In my viewpoint, the player was already stumbling before Amen made contact with him and would be considered incidental contact. 9/10 times that so called foul would have not been called on an inbound pass with 2.3 seconds left on the clock. These refs were incompetent, but it is time to move on.

This team is really good and will be much better as the year wears on and we get Tari and/or DFS back. Their absence is causing Ime to play too many gimmicky lineups. I would prefer he give Tate more time than keep running out 2 bigs or Reed and Holiday at the same time. Our defense is suffering immensely.

 

No better example than Magic player causing Durant to trip, no call.

 

Violet Palmer vibes

 

On him stumbling already, your viewpoint is wrong. He didn't stumble until after the contact from right heel to left knee. From the clip I've seen from a higher angle, it does not look like that much contact such that one should assume it caused him to trip (though the video was short and cut off before the actual fall). I'm highly skeptical that the ref called the foul because he thought Amen's knee hitting Hardaway's heel hard enough to cause Hardaway to trip himself up. Ref should be required to state more objectively on what they saw instead of "defensive foul on Houston".

It looked like Hardaway fell so they called a foul assuming Amen's foot tripped Hardaway, and then justified it by any contact Amen made.

 

Not 'fouling in love' with this one.

 

Doesn't matter what's a foul and what's not. Rockets find ways to lose in close games against good teams. Have for years. It's tiresome but it ain't changing, so might as well accept it.

 

This sort of "catch and release" play is a staple of every team's defense in the West (thank you, Golden State, for teaching the league how to exploit the "freedom of movement" era). But yes, grabbing a fistful of jersey should always be illegal.

Jone also uses two hands on Sengun's back in the post, which an automatic foul. The NBA rulebook page is emphatic: "Note that a defender using two hands on an offensive player with the ball is an automatic foul, whether or not the offensive player’s speed, quickness, balance or rhythm is affected.”

For the refs it's an easy call. See two hands. Blow the whistle. Sengun gets continuation and the bucket.

It looks like the NBA 2-minute report is being composed by an amateur or marketing intern who doesn't actually know the rules and is being told to smooth everything over.

The problem is that the officials were biased toward the Nuggets. They wanted to please the Denver fans and called the game accordingly. There's no way to spin or sugarcoat this result.

 

I really hope we avoid Denver in the playoffs. Jokic scares me the most of anyone. Call me crazy but I'd much rather see OKC and try to take them down.

 

Two close games. The rockets beating themselves scare me more than these other western squads.

th players have to be bette in their spots. People been championing Amen as a max player and Denver chose to guard him with Jokic and it worked greatly amen couldn’t taken advantage of that.

 

25k is so light that’s the league acknowledging they deserved it.

 

High end? Seriously? Right now, Castle is better (or at least equal) to Tyreke Evans at his very best.

I watched Evans a lot when he was with the Kings and the guy was in the bottom 10% of basketball intelligence. His rookie year of 20/5/5 was a joke stat the Kings purposely made happen to help him win Rookie of the Year.

 

I normally don't get worked up about individual Rockets regular season games (not involving the Lakers), but I'm still not quite over the Nuggets loss.

It's still eating at me. My son missed the game and, as usual, wanted me to break it down for him. I didn't want to.

 

https://support.watch.nba.com/hc/en-us/requests/new To submit complaint. We should flood them with complaints.

 

We won. Refs changed the outcome.

 

This is infuriating and outrageously ludicrous. At least make the 2-minute report useful in that you admit your mistake by not punishing the coach or player that pointed out those mistakes. If the refs aren't going to get punished for being wrong, at least don't punish the coach/player for being right. It's like when a player gets a tech for arguing a call and then they review it after a challenge and it gets overturned because the ref was wrong but they don't overturn the tech? That's so moronic, they wouldn't have argued the call if you got the call right in the first place so why not overturn the tech as well? Refs have zero accountability and the fault all lies with the players and coaches. Refs don't get fines, don't have any repercussions whatsoever, where is even the incentive for getting calls right? Out of the goodness of their hearts? Out of the love of being a ref? What a joke. It's the biggest scam in sports.

 

Refuse to pay Ime!

 

That's how I see it too.

If the refs saw exactly what happened on the floor, they wouldn't have call a foul. Two running players incidentally had minimal bodily contact and one fell down. They didn't see it clearly and assumed that Amen caused Hardaway's fall and blew the whistle. The review saw something that technically could justify the call.

I've said it long ago about moving screen. At least 70% of NBA screens could be called an offensive foul. So refs can selectively call some of them and let others go. If you reviewed them, the calls could always be technically justified.