Rumors

The NBA today announced the list of game officials assigned to the NBA Finals 2025 presented by YouTube TV. The championship series between the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder tips off on Thursday, June 5 at 8:30 p.m. ET on ABC.

NBA.com

The referees assigned to the 2025 NBA Finals are below: Tony Brothers (14th Finals), James Capers (13th Finals), Marc Davis (14th Finals), Tyler Ford (1st Finals), Scott Foster (18th Finals), John Goble (9th Finals), David Guthrie (8th Finals), Ben Taylor (1st Finals), Josh Tiven (6th Finals), James Williams (5th Finals), Sean Wright (2nd Finals), Zach Zarba (12th Finals)

NBA.com

Adam Spolane: Fred VanVleet after tonight's game: "I thought the refs were amazing tonight. I love to give them credit when they're good. Shoutout to Ben Taylor, man. He reffed an incredible game tonight."

x.com

Tuesday night's officiating crew featured Marc Davis, Ben Taylor and Danielle Scott. Lillard noted that foul calls seem to have gone down across the league late in the season. "It was weird, but it seems to be the trend," Lillard said. "Fouls are not a part of the game no more. It's like, I've had times where I thought I was getting fouled, and there's been other times where I was surprised a foul didn't get called on me, where I might bump somebody or get a piece of somebody's arm and they don't call it, and I'm like, 'Man, they're really just letting us play.'

ESPN

Josh Lewenberg: The fine is in. The NBA has fined Darko Rajakovic $25,000 for his post-game criticism of the officials. Pretty light penalty, all things considered. VanVleet was fined $30K for his Ben Taylor/officiating rant last season.

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Tom Haberstroh: Here's the game log. After FVV press conference, Ben Taylor moved out of crew chief role in four of the next five games. Very abnormal for him. For more on this story

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NBA Referees: This is categorically false. The schedule for the games referenced was released weeks in advance. Ben Taylor is a Part Time Crew Chief and frequently receives Referee assignments throughout the season. His positional assignments remained unchanged.

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"Since that Fred VanVleet rant... the NBA has actually demoted Ben Taylor in his assignments." @tomhaberstroh on how the #NBA has handled the Taylor/VanVleet situation with @JDBunkis .

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Michael Grange: These are Fred VanVleet's full comments on the officiating tonight after Raptors loss to the Clippers. Just eviscerating. He will take a fine ... very big fine: “I thought Ben Taylor was f*cking terrible tonight. I think that most nights, you know out of the three, there's one or two that just f*ck the game up. It's been like that a couple of games in a row. Denver was tough, obviously. You come out tonight, competing pretty hard and I get a bullsh*t tech that changes the whole dynamic of the game, changed the whole flow of the game.”

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Fred VanVleet: “And you know, most of the refs are trying hard, I like a lot of the refs , they're trying hard, they're pretty fair, and communicate well. And then you got the other ones who just want to be d*cks and just kind of f*ck up the game.. And no one's coming to see that sh*t. They come to see the the players. And I think we're losing a little bit of the fabric of what the NBA is and was and it's been disappointing this season. You can look it up: Most of my techs this year have been with Ben Taylor officiating. So at a certain point as a player you feel it's personal and it's never a good place to be. That's not why we lost tonight, we got outplayed, but it definitely makes it tougher to overcome. “

Twitter

(think the tech was because of your history?) Fred VanVleet: There's been a certain times this year where I feel our team is getting consumed with the way the whistle is going, especially after the night we just had in Denver the way that finished so there was a couple calls earlier that we all disagreed with. And if I say to my team, 'come on, guys, let's keep playing to the bullshit' and that warrants a tech I think that's I think that's a little bit crazy. Like what are we doing, now what I mean? And there's a fine line obviously, I understand that. But I think the jurisdiction and the power trip that we've been on this year with some of our officials in his league is getting out of hand and I'll take my fine for speaking on it but it's just this is f*cking ridiculous.

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Josh Lewenberg: “I don’t mind, I’ll take a fine. I don’t really care. I thought Ben Taylor was f***ing terrible tonight. On most nights, out of the 3, there’s 1 or 2 that f*** the game up.” Fred VanVleet on tonight’s officials, and NBA officiating: pic.twitter.com/Plp8DaqNp5

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Tim Reynolds: Curtis Blair, Nick Buchert, Tyler Ford, Tre Maddox, Gediminas Petraitis, Ben Taylor and Scott Twardoski are first-time playoff officials, the NBA just announced.

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In a statement, Budenholzer said he reached out to Taylor and apologized. “With the league's permission, I have reached out to and apologized to Ben Taylor for what happened in the game versus Cleveland," Budenholzer said. "Ben is an excellent young referee who is a valuable member of the NBA family. We all understand that any contact - including incidental contact - with an official is unacceptable. I accept the NBA's fine and look forward to putting this situation in the past."

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