Malcolm White wants to make it clear that his clothesline-like hit on Matthew Wright during the GlobalPort Batang Pier-Rain or Shine Elasto Painters tiff on Wednesday evening was nothing but a hard foul, nothing else.
White is under scrutiny yet again – especially in Wright’s eyes – as he hit the Filipino-Canadian on the head with 3:26 left in the second quarter, in a play that hadn’t been whistled and left Wright furious that he charged and gave a referee an earful.
Wright was then the one “punished”, as he got a technical foul for using profane language.
“This is basketball and, I mean, what happens on the court I just wanna leave it on the court you know. I can’t.. I don’t wanna explain and talk about me fouling him. It was just a hard foul, that’s all it was – a hard foul,” said White.
White did not want to comment on the issue, or even about the way the referees blew their whistle, until he could not hold it back any longer and expressed what has been in his chest with regards to the officiating.
“I don’t wanna say anything ’till I… to talk down on the referee or the league or anything like that, but I just think sometimes they should just let us play. I mean there’s too many… It’s one-sided,” the 6-foot-9 White stated.
“There’s too many ticky-tack fouls that’s been called. That’s all I have to say about it. They say the league was gonna be more physical, I don’t see that at all. It’s just what it was last year when I was here,” he continued.
“I mean, it’s basketball, we gonna bump, we gonna hit. This is not women’s professional basketball. That’s all I got to say about the hit. It’s a hard foul.”
Wednesday was even tougher for White ias he and the Batang Pier were blown out by 27 points, 108-135. But the American center said that they can’t dwell on the humiliating defeat.
“We just gotta put this behind us, man. We gotta have a short term memory of this game. They came in with their backs against the wall. I mean, they knew they needed to get this win,” said White, who had 24 points and six rebounds.
“We needed this win, but they jumped out on us. We knew they were gonna come out strong. We just couldn’t respond. We couldn’t get that push we need. Hats off to them, they played hard, they played tough, they deserved to win.”
