NBA executive says league is not out to get Warriors’ Green
Others also called for similar flagrant fouls, NBA executive says
Last postseason’s most controversial storyline has leaked into the regular season.
Draymond Green’s afterfoul body movements cost the Warriors in their late Thursday night, doubleovertime loss to the Rockets. Green was called for a crucial flagrant foul with under three minutes left.
Going up for a put-back, Green, fouled on the layup attempt, exaggerated contact with a flail of the arm and a kick of the leg, which both connected with James Harden’s head. The referees reviewed the sequence and delivered a flagrant call, giving Harden two free throws.
Postgame, a bewildered Green expressed frustration with the call. Then, after Saturday’s shootaround, he criticized the league office directly for its punishments.
“A lot of these guys that make the rules can’t touch the rim, yet they tell you how you’re way up there in the air, which way your body (is supposed to go),” Green said, among many other things (read it in full here). “I don’t understand that. That’s like me going in there and saying, ‘Hey, you did something on your paperwork wrong.’ I don’t know what your paperwork looks like.”
On Sunday, Kiki VanDeWeghe, executive vice president of basketball operations for the NBA, spoke with the Bay Area News Group in an attempt to clarify both the ruling and the rhetoric around it.
VanDeWeghe stressed that the rule isn’t confined to Green. He has become the public face of it because of what happened last postseason and his stern public response to its usage against him. But Green isn’t targeted, VanDeWeghe said.
There have been six penalties this season: Green and Amir Johnson were levied flagrants, Jaylen Brown, Russell Westbrook and Dwight Howard were delivered technicals and Marcus Smart received a flagrant upgrade after the fact.
“Our rules have to be applied evenly for all players,” VanDeWeghe said. “Whether you sit on the end of the bench or are a star and play a lot, our rules are for everyone.”
Green’s two connections with Steven Adams in the West Finals — one on a knee to the groin and one on a kick to the groin — sparked a discussion about the sanctions around these type of actions. And the NBA’s competition committee decided this past summer to increase the usage of it.
That committee includes a player representative, a referee representative, current general managers — some of whom have NBA playing experience — and Warriors owner Joe Lacob. VanDeWeghe, who often levies the final ruling upon next-day review, also had a 13-year playing career.
“Four members of our competition committee played significant basketball, 10 years-plus,” VanDeWeghe said. “Everyone who is on this committee has been around this league a very long time and takes this very seriously.”
VanDeWeghe said the competition committee’s offseason research and film consumption indicated that “these actions, these flails, typically done with arms and or kick of legs, have become more prevalent basically starting last year.” They are most often done to try to exaggerate contact and alert or trick the referee into a foul call, something Steve Kerr talked about at length earlier in the week.
They’ve been deemed unnatural basketball acts. On Saturday, Green challenged the specified penalization, naming James Harden and his crafty under-the-arm layups as unnatural acts to try to draw contact that don’t result in similar penalization.
But the rule is specifically designed to penalize the flails that result in direct hits to an opponent, anything that puts players in danger of injury.
“The competition committee studied these over two sessions and discussed a number of (examples),” VanDeWeghe said. “They decided that this was happening a little bit too often and we needed to be a little more diligent in these things because it was dangerous to players, whether they got kicked in the head or the groin or an arm flail to the neck.”
The final decision was to instruct referees to pay more attention to these after-foul acts and allow both the on-court officials and replay center discretion to rule each act separately as a no-call, technical, flagrant 1 or flagrant 2, depending on the specifics of the play.
Westbrook was penalized with a technical foul after he delivered an inadvertent kick to Kentavious Caldwell-Pope’s groin area in a game at Detroit earlier this season. Westbrook rose and kicked his legs backward on a shot. Pope, behind Westbrook, was nailed on the play.
Green, unlike Westbrook, was called for a flagrant 1 on his play, which is a stiffer ruling, though it may have actually helped the Warriors in this instance. Green already had one technical in the game and another would’ve meant an ejection.
Moving forward, agree with the ruling or not, it has become clear Green must be more careful with those in traffic flails. Because, if they connect, a penalty will arise. And enough flagrant or technical points can lead to an ejection or suspension at the wrong time, which, rather infamously, derailed the Warriors’ postseason last June.
“You’re trying your best not to guess what’s in somebody’s head,” VanDeWeghe said. “You’re trying to look at the film and see what it tells you. Is this body movement, given what happened, is it reasonable that this would’ve been a natural movement or a basketball movement? If it is judged unreasonable, then we’re looking at one of these potential penalties, depending on how severe the contact is and where the contact goes.”