Tuesday night in the NBA featured two high-profile ejections.
In Phoenix, infamous instigator Draymond Green “fought for positioning” on Jusuf Nurkic by turning around and flailing a right hook into his face. Given Green’s laundry list of precedents, he will almost certainly be suspended for a long time. In Chicago, reigning NBA Finals MVP Nikola Jokic took a great (but not unusual) exception to a non-foul call. He apparently used an anodyne curse word to complain — at least in the context of a super competitive sports league — and was strangely ejected with just one technical foul.
The problem with the NBA is that the league will probably do nothing meaningful about the circumstances with Jokic’s ordinary star player protest. It will instead continue emboldening officials with short fuses and thin skin to have a lot more influence on its games than they should.
Kudos to Jokic for showing a sense of humor about the incident because I don’t know that I would’ve shown the same composure if I were in his shoes:
"I'm just happy that we didn't play in Serbia, this game. It's could've been really fun to see how it would be handled."
– Nikola Jokic on the referee ejecting him
(h/t @awfulannouncing )
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) December 13, 2023
There have been 22 ejections thus far in this still-young NBA season. There were 75 all of last year, including the playoffs. Notable names to miss time so far because they disagreed with a call — dangerous situations like Green thankfully remain exceptions — include Jokic (twice), Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jaren Jackson Jr., Chris Paul, DeMar DeRozan, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Jamal Murray, and Trae Young.
Mind you, no one has played more than 25 games yet! Those are a lot of big names to miss, in some cases, significant playing time when they were most likely one of the marquee draws for the audience in attendance and for folks watching at home.
Jokic’s latest ejection stands out in particular. Tuesday night in Chicago was Serbian Heritage Night. The Midwest jewel has the second-largest Serbian population in the world, outside of Belgrade, the capital of the Eastern European country. People paid a lot of their good, hard-earned money to see Jokic play on the one night he would visit Chicago all year. I’d venture to guess it was a significant part of the reason the opposing fans at the United Center booed Jokic’s ejection. He is unquestionably one of the faces of the league, and people were there to watch him play and put on a show just as much as they were to see their hometown Chicago Bulls.
Jokic probably deserved a technical. No one is disputing that. But to throw him out outright for using one swear word is absurd. These are some of the most competitive human beings on the planet. Cusses fly around willy-nilly in every NBA game, every night during the play, after the play, and between the whistles. This is an egregious example of power-tripping NBA officials holding entirely too much power and almost behaving as if fans buy tickets and tune into games to watch them instead. When a player complains about a call, they’re emotional in the heat of the moment. A referee needs to have a thicker suit of armor and understand that complaints are seldom personal attacks or dangerous to their safety. That is an unwritten prerequisite of the job.
And the league needs to address this instead of sweeping it under the rug and discouraging any public criticism of its officiating. It’s hard to imagine Denver head coach Mike Malone doesn’t say something more cutting if he isn’t worried about backlash:
Mike Malone on Jokic’s ejection:
“He just felt the language that was used warranted an ejection. A one-tech ejection l, which I was very shocked at. And when I heard what he said, I said ‘I don’t understand the problem because when I grew up that was a term of endearment.” pic.twitter.com/0k9M1wLKY7
— Darnell Mayberry (@DarnellMayberry) December 13, 2023
After seeing how its stars treated the regular season, the NBA decided enough was enough this year.
Not only did it institute new policies against the notorious “load management,” but it also created a massive in-season tournament to encourage more competitiveness in the early portions of a long 82-game season. These were earnest moves at attempting to improve the quality of the product by incentivizing star player motivation. It’s early, but returns thus far have been promising. The faces of the league seem to be much more locked into December basketball than in years past. Stars seem to care about the entire grind again, and that’s a fantastic development for the league’s health.
But letting NBA officials romp around like whiny tyrants with short fuses flies in the face of these measures. It is a direct contradiction. What is the point of pushing star players to care more if they’re going to be ejected on a whim? It also forgets what all this silly ball-bouncing is about. The NBA is an entertainment product first and foremost. The only people who seem to care about the game’s “integrity” at all costs are the league and its officials. They are taking themselves entirely too seriously.
Almost everyone else watches NBA games to see players like Jokic make bonkers passes or shots because they’re so aesthetically pleasing. That’s always been the case, and that will never change.
The NBA would do well to remember that.
