Steve Kerr was feeling very bah-humbug about the officiating in his team’s game against the Denver Nuggets.
Kerr and the Golden State Warriors came up short in their Christmas Day contest, losing to the Nuggets 120-114. Denver was led by two-time MVP Nikola Jokic, who scored 26 points despite shooting just 4-for-12 from the field. That was because Jokic earned 18 free-throw attempts on the day, making all 18 of them.
Speaking with reporters after the game, Kerr went off on a rant expressing his disgust with the fouls that the referees had awarded.
“I have no problem with the officials themselves,” said Kerr, per Anthony Slater of The Athletic. “All across the league we have really good officials. I have a problem with the way we are legislating defense out of the game. That’s what we’re doing in the NBA. The way that we are teaching the officials, we are enabling players to BS their way to the foul line.
“If I were a fan, I wouldn’t have wanted to watch the second half of that game,” Kerr added. “It was disgusting. It was just baiting refs into calls, but the refs have to make those calls because that’s how they’re taught … We’ve enabled the players. They are taking full advantage and it’s a parade to the free throw line. And it’s disgusting to watch.”
You can listen to Kerr’s full rant here.
Indeed, Jokic was the beneficiary of some suspect foul calls against the Warriors. Though he is averaging 5.9 free-throw attempts per game this season, he got more than triple that on Monday. Warriors fans were also especially incensed because Jokic’s flopping resulted not only in foul shots for himself but offensive foul calls on Golden State as well.
Will be using this Jokic flop for agenda purposes later
Somehow a push from Steph sent him from 3 point line to the restricted area pic.twitter.com/P6Ui43ESUy
— Tony Clements (@TonyCMKE) December 25, 2023
Granted, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Jokic is often times legitimately fouled, and he is far from the NBA’s poster child of flopping (which could be Joel Embiid, Trae Young, LeBron James, or a number of others). But even with this season’s newly-implemented measures against flopping, Kerr still does not think the league is doing a good enough job.
