Lebron James, Blake Griffin and other NBA stars were quick to show support for Demarcus Cousins who will now miss the remainder of the season. USA TODAY Sports
When Kevin Durant offered a mea culpa on Wednesday, the Golden State Warriors star said he’d acted like a “jerk” when he accused referee James Williams of targeting him during a game last week. The comment was well received by the officials community that has had so much tension with NBA players this season.
“Apology accepted,” a tweet from the National Basketball Referees Association read. “This is the kind of common ground we hope to achieve when the NBRA meets with @TheNBPA next month.”
If only for a day, this ongoing therapy session had gone well.
“Well, I was sitting in bed that night after the game, and I was still a little upset, and I looked at the plays to make sure I was right,” Durant told USA TODAY Sports. “You’ve got to be right if you’re making a big deal out of it.”
Upon further review, he wasn’t.
“Once I watched (the play), I was like, ‘That was not a foul,’” Durant continued. “I look pretty dumb complaining when you’re up 12 in the third quarter, and my whole thing is I can’t let my (expletive) – whatever it is – get in the way of the team. We won (the game), but it got in the way just a little bit. We shouldn’t be talking about that after a game. I just felt bad, and I wanted to make it right.”
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It was an encouraging step ahead of a planned All-Star Weekend meeting in Los Angeles on Feb. 17, when three players and three officials are expected to discuss possible solutions to the ongoing friction. Before then, the NBA will launch the five-pronged initiative announced on Friday that is aimed at improving relations between both sides.
Yet while the tension between officials and players is a league-wide issue, there’s a six-degrees-of-Golden-State component that is impossible to ignore:
-- Durant, who had been ejected just twice in his first 10 seasons (regular season and playoffs), not only leads the league with four ejections this year but is second in technical fouls with 10. He was fined $15,000 for his comments about Williams.
-- Draymond Green, who was fined $25,000 by the NBA earlier this month after he said the referees were “ruining the game” and recommended that the NBA “get a new crop,” leads the league in technical fouls with 11.
-- Stephen Curry and Andre Iguodala, with just three technical fouls between them, are both vice presidents on the eight-player National Basketball Players Association executive committee that has been intimately involved in this diplomatic process. Yet Curry was ejected for the second time in his nine-year career when he threw his mouthpiece in the direction of official Scott Wall early this season.
-- Shaun Livingston, the 13-year veteran point guard with one playoff ejection to his name, was ejected and suspended one game for his Dec. 3 confrontation with official Courtney Kirkland in which the two butted heads while arguing a no-call. Kirkland, who is in his 18th NBA season, was taken out of game rotations for a week as a result after it was concluded by the NBA that he “moved toward” Livingston before making contact.
But for all the disagreements they’ve had, there’s one thing on which they all agree: Putting ego aside and being willing to admit you’re wrong is the key to reconciliation.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr can appreciate Durant’s gesture as much as anyone. After all, he was on the other end of a similar exchange earlier this season.
“I had one ref, an excellent ref, who in a game this year I said (to him), ‘Are you sure about that (call)?’” Kerr told USA TODAY Sports. “And he said, ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ so I said, ‘Please look at it at halftime and let me know.’ And we looked at it at halftime, our staff, and he was clearly wrong. And he came out in the third quarter and he said, ‘Steve, I think I was right.’ And I couldn’t believe it.”
And just like that, Kerr and the official had some emotional baggage.
“About a month later, the next time we saw him, he goes, ‘I’ve got to own up to you; I let my ego get in the way,’” Kerr said. “I thought it was one of the coolest things for him to say that. But in the heat of the moment, it’s hard for any of us to admit that we screwed up.”
Kerr would know.
During a Nov. 2 game in San Antonio, as the Warriors trailed 28-12 midway through the first quarter, the 52-year-old erupted on the sideline. It didn’t take a professional lip reader to pick up on the R-rated words that were being spewed. A video of Kerr showed up on his cell phone courtesy of his daughter, Maddy.
“I’ve been busted on camera a couple times cussing at the refs, and that is so wrong,” Kerr said. “If I’m going to yell at a ref, it can’t be using profanity, and I’ve learned that. I’m really trying hard to do better with it. And what I’ve found is, especially since that incident early in San Antonio, is I’ve made a concerted effort to not cuss at any refs. And it’s no coincidence, they’re treating me better.
“So I owe them the respect of being treated as a human being, and what they owe me is an admission that they’re wrong when they make a bad call, right? ... The second a referee says to me, ‘Steve, that’s my fault. I missed it,’ or ‘I may have missed it,’ I back off. It’s completely disarming, and that’s what we need from both sides. I need to compose myself better. Draymond needs to compose himself better, and the refs have to be constantly communicating, admitting to mistakes, and yet keeping control of the game. In the context of how competitive and passionate we all are, it’s a tricky balance to find.”
As Curry sees it, communication is key here.
“At the end of the day, my whole goal is to just improve communication from both sides,” Curry, who hopes to be involved in the All-Star weekend meeting, told USA TODAY Sports. “Obviously there’s things that players are at fault for…and refs as well, but it’s all about restoring (the relationship) – as best you can.
“The overall relationship is definitely a lot more strained than it was in years past. It’s just the quick trigger – sometimes, they know we’re athletes and we’re going to have an emotional reaction to a call, and as long as we come correct then you’ve got to be able to come correct too. More times than not, because of a personal issue between a ref and a player or a ref’s just having a bad day or whatever it is, there’s way too many situations where you can’t even (talk) just man to man to talk to them about what they see and what they were looking at, and maybe get some type of feedback. It’s ‘Don’t talk to me,’ and stuff can get testy in those situations. That’s the biggest thing. We’re all human.”
Gallery: 2018 NBA All-Star Game rosters
