Knicks call Joel Embiid’s foul on Mitchell Robinson ‘dirty’

PHILADELPHIA — The New York Knicks took exception to the flagrant foul Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid committed on Knicks center Mitchell Robinson in the first quarter of Philadelphia’s 125-114 Game 3 victory, calling it “dirty” and saying Robinson was fortunate to avoid serious injury on the play.

“It was dirty,” Knicks guard Donte DiVincenzo said. “It was dirty.”

“I mean, we’re just happy Mitch didn’t get a serious injury on that,” Knicks forward Josh Hart added. “I’m all for tough fouls, tough playoff fouls, but that’s something that can put a guy out for a significant amount of time. So we’re lucky he didn’t get seriously hurt during that time.”

The play came with 4:34 in the first quarter, when Embiid fell to the ground trying to draw an offensive foul — which wasn’t called — and then he grabbed at Robinson’s right leg as he landed on the ground nearby.

Robinson, who was questionable coming into the game with left ankle injury management — the same ankle he had surgery on earlier this season — fell to the ground. As the game went on his movement steadily got worse, to the point where he eventually was ruled out after halftime with a left ankle sprain.

The play was reviewed to see if it would be a Flagrant 1 or a Flagrant 2. If it was deemed the latter, Embiid would have been ejected from the game. Ultimately, though, crew chief Zach Zarba ruled it a Flagrant 1 and said in a pool report after the game that there was a unanimous ruling among the three officials doing the game — Zarba, James Williams and Kevin Cutler — plus the replay center, that it should be a Flagrant 1.

“In that situation, the crew gets together, we go and review the foul. In this instance, the crew was unanimous along with the replay center official in Secaucus that this foul was unnecessary but did not rise to the level of a flagrant 2,” Zarba said. “The unnecessary contact rose to the level of a flagrant 1 but we were unanimous that this did not rise to the level of excessive contact, unnecessary and excessive, which would have been a flagrant 2 ejection. That’s why we kept it a flagrant 1.”

Embiid, in explaining his side of the story after the game, said as he was laying on the ground he began to think back to when Jonathan Kuminga fell on him in San Francisco back on Jan. 30, when Embiid suffered a meniscus injury that required surgery that kept him out for two months.

“Obviously Mitchell Robinson jumping…