DON’T BE A DINWID’
Carroll: Need to focus on selves, stop griping over calls
The message from Spencer Dinwiddie has been that the Nets haven’t gotten their fair share of calls or respect from the referees this season. But veteran leader DeMarre Carroll has his own message for his team:
Less bitching and more balling.
“This is the NBA: It’s a thin line between losing and winning, and we’re realizing that,” said Carroll, out with a knee sprain for Wednesday’s game against the Pistons at Barclays Center.
“We’ve been looking for the refs to bail us out, but you can’t look for the refs to bail you out. We’re playing the game, so we’ve got to go out there and compete. … If we limit a couple of mistakes we easily win [Monday], we easily win the Boston game.”
Instead, they lost 114-113 in overtime to the Raptors on Monday after falling 87-85 to the Celtics two days earlier. After they missed last-ditch shots in both games — amid heavy contact with no fouls called — Dinwiddie was passive-aggressive in critiquing the refs, as he had been following a similar finish Dec. 23 at Indiana.
But Carroll said after that game that a young losing team can’t expect to get the benefit of the doubt from officials. And on Tuesday he went a step further, saying badgering the refs is downright counterproductive.
“You can’t look for the call in this league,” Carroll said. “Refs, they’re going to see calls, they’re going to miss calls. But at the end of the day, you’re just screaming at a ref, and you’re hollering at him the whole game; they’re going to miss calls. They don’t worry about screaming at you or hollering at you, so I feel like we’ve got to really focus on the game.
“We can’t focus on the ref. When we stop focusing on the ref, maybe we’ll get our calls. Let them do their jobs instead of jumping on them the whole time. It’ll really help us out in the long run. Let’s try an opposite effect and see if it works.”
After holding his tongue following that loss to the Pacers last month, Carroll has seen it become an issue and plans to address it.
“For sure, I’ll share. Me as a leader I’ve got to step in,” Carroll said. “We’ve just got to try the opposite effect. Hollering at the refs, screaming at them, that isn’t going to do us [any] justice. They’re human just like we are, so at the end of the day we’ve got to try something different maybe. Hopefully it works.”
For his part, Carroll is also hopeful that his injury is more short-term. An MRI exam revealed just a sprain. He is considered day-to-day.
“[He’s] getting better, improving. … It’s progressing well. We’ll see how he responds,” said coach Kenny Atkinson, who will start Joe Harris until Carroll returns. “Joe’s size and understanding of what we’re doing, I like that.”
It’s the same knee that cost Carroll over 50 games two seasons ago, but he said this injury is unrelated and nowhere near as severe.
“It’s the same knee, but totally different. It’s nothing to that effect. That was some- thing serious, but this is not,” said Carroll, who added he is convinced all the extra work with the performance team helped him avert a more dire injury. “For sure I did.
“If I didn’t have that performance team to make me do all these leg exercises when I hate doing them … it would’ve been something worse. Probably my knee wouldn’t have been able to sustain it. But it did. … I’m happy about it. I’ll tell you one thing for sure, I’m not going to miss a leg exercise.”