After the Warriors beat the Hornets in North Carolina on Monday evening, Steve Kerr wasn’t happy. Of course he was delighted by his team’s comfortable 119-101 victory, but he was tired of NBA referees missing traveling violations, which he considers is greatly affecting the sport.
Once the game was over at Spectrum Center, in which many crucial traveling violations were missed, the long-time Golden State coach unleashed his complaints about the league’s officiating despite the fact that he’ll probably receive a fine for his comments.
“I don’t understand why we’re not teaching our officials to call travel in this league,” he said postgame. “They do a great job, they work their tails off, they communicate well, but I see five, six travels a game that aren’t called. We had four ourselves in Philadelphia [on Saturday vs. the 76ers], none of them were called.”
Kerr the added: “You know it’s a problem when there’s like a hundred fans in the stands and every coach on the sideline – everybody’s doing that [traveling violation signal].Everyone’s seeing it, so we’re clearly not teaching, as a league, our officials to look at the feet. And I’ve made that clear to the league.”
The Warriors tactician even anticipated his punishment. “Maybe I’ll hear back from them after these comments – for the good of the game,” Steve insisted. “The entire game is based on footwork. For the good of the game, we need to enforce traveling violations. And we’re not doing it. I don’t understand why.”
The officiating crew that Monday evening was comprised of Mark Lindsay, Michael Smith and Andy Nagy. “Every time I watch tape, there’s three or four plays a game where the whole bench, fans, everyone sees it,” he kept at it. “I just think we can do a better job. It’s about the way we’re teaching them.
“These guys are awesome,” Kerr continued. “They got brutal jobs and have a million things to watch. But footwork is the entire basis of the game. We need to call traveling. It’s going to be a much better game if we clean it up.”
