MILWAUKEE — After longtime assessed a flagrant foul penalty two on a bang-bang play, and after Foster proceeded to offer an alternate explanation in the postgame pool report than he gave both the head coach and player on the court, Knicks forward Josh Hart thinks a rule change should be on the table. Specifically, Hart thinks flagrant foul penalty two ejections should be decided by officials at the league’s Secaucus, N.J. office, not by the referees on the floor. “Hopefully — if it’s a ruling like that to where a player is getting kicked out the game — hopefully they can change that from the refs on the court, who might have a different involvement in the game, to people in Secaucus, where it’s just a handful of people. Where the consistency is there,” Hart said ahead of tipoff against the Bucks on Sunday. “[Starting Knicks center] Isaiah [Hartenstein] got his head taken off two games before that, and that was a Flagrant 1.” With less than a minute left in the first quarter of the Knicks’ 108-100 loss to the
Chicago Bulls on Friday, Hart drove down the lane and left his feet to finish at the rim before Chicago’s Javonte Green stripped the ball out of his hands. After losing the ball, Hart flailed in mid-air. As part of the flail, his foot made contact with Green’s face. Foster immediately assessed Hart a flagrant foul penalty two and ejected him from the game. Both Hart and head coach Tom Thibodeau said Foster told them intent factored into the decision — that Hart looked Green in the face and kicked him on purpose, leaving Foster with no choice but to toss him from the game. In the postgame pool report, however, Foster said intent did not play a role in the decision to eject Hart, a full 180-degree about-face from the explanation he gave both Thibodeau and Hart on the United Center court on Friday. “Intent is not a criteria for what we do when we are ruling on a. Flagrant foul penalty two or one,” Foster said in the pool report. “However, wind-up, impact and follow-through, potential for injury, whether the act was a non-basketball play, and location of the contact as well as whether we thought it was a reckless act are all the criteria that we felt were met for this decision.” Hart maintained he did not kick Green on purpose. “Obviously I’m off-balance,” he said. “My leg is going up before I even look at him. But give credit to Scott Foster for thinking my athletic ability is so great that he can’t fathom that I was able to make that decision to kick him in a split second. Hart said he should have been issued a flagrant foul penalty one, which would have resulted in two free throws and the ball back to the Bulls while keeping the Knicks guard in play. “[It] obviously sucks, it being taken out of my control,” he said. “Flagrant 1 I think it probably should’ve been, something that was accidental, but I’m not sure what he was thinking because he was later like, ‘oh, intent doesn’t matter and yada, yada, yada.’ But then he told me I looked at him and kicked him which obviously implies that I intended to. “I’m not sure what his thought process was. Because it was kind of two different stories. So it is what it is.” “He said you looked at him and kicked him, and then he answered the question later and was talking about intent. Obviously he made it like I intended to [when] I didn’t have the time to think about kicking him. So obviously he just gave me a tech right before that. He probably went there with a negative connotation of what happened. That’s why sometimes it is what it is.” Only two games earlier in a March 31 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, Isaiah Hartenstein was on the receiving end of a hit worse than Hart delivered Green in Chicago. Hartenstein pump-faked to get Thunder forward Kenrich Williams into the air, and Williams raked across Hartenstein’s head in an attempt to block the shot. Officials assessed Williams a flagrant foul penalty one, which allowed him to remain in the game. Hart said Foster wouldn’t listen to an explanation after the play. “He kind of just walked away. I wasn’t able to say anything,” he said on Sunday. “Obviously if you saw the play, it’s a bang-bang play. If you say I looked at him and kicked him, it gives you the assumption of: You made the decision to do that. I don’t think I even had time to make that decision. So I thought it was ridiculous.” Hart was issued a technical foul earlier in the quarter but it was rescinded. He will be fined at least $2,000, however, if the league does not rescind Friday’s flagrant foul two. Plus the Knicks got crushed on the glass in a disappointing loss to the East’s No. 9 Bulls. “You get the power for me to lose money in people’s hands [that] I just cursed out,” Hart said. “I don’t think that’s right. You know what I mean? Influencing the game and my pocket, that’s interesting. “I don’t even know the kid [Green]. Like I said, that’s an interesting call, especially in the first quarter. Obviously if it was the third quarter and it’s been a chippy game and you’ve got to make an example, I understand it a little bit more. But especially this late in the season, bro. Every game matters. Making a call like that where obviously it’s not a purposeful act, it’s selfish.” Hart joked that the ejection may change his off-season training regimen. “I think taekwondo might be in my summer workout plan now. Scott’s welcome to take a class or two with me if he’s free this summer.”