Steve Kerr has a new addition to his pre-game routine: He’s gotta make sure he checks his inbox.
The NBA sent out an email to the league Tuesday about increased emphasis on whistles for carries and dribble violations, but Kerr missed the memo. So he was visibly fired up about the fact that Jordan Poole was whistled for three dribbling violations in Tuesday night’s 116-109 loss to the Miami Heat.
Anthony Slater of The Athletic compiled Poole's violations into a video clip, so judge for yourself.
"What Jordan does is a carry, but the whole league’s been doing it,” Kerr said. “I guess I gotta start checking my email on gameday."
Before he left the podium, Kerr spoke sarcastically about looking at his emails before games.
"I'm looking forward to next week's email where they announce they're gonna start calling traveling, also,” Kerr said. “That's for sure coming. If they're gonna fix the palming, they're for sure gonna fix the traveling."
After getting called for his third palming violation of the game, Poole gave the refs a hilarious stare. Add it to Poole’s growing library of memes.
Draymond Green also went to bat for Poole and said he hopes the NBA keeps the enforcement uniform across the league. In recent years, refs have looked the other way when whistling players for palming and carrying the ball. Allen Iverson was nicknamed “The Crossover” and he helped change the way the game was officiated with his handle that often blurred the lines.
"If you’re gonna call that, you better call it,” Green said. “Because every guard in the NBA carries. A lot. Some of the best ball handlers in the NBA carry often. If it's a point of emphasis, let's see it."
The Warriors didn't make Poole available to the media via press conference Tuesday, but the guard chimed in by sharing a classic clip of overzealous ref Steve Javie regulating Iverson on his Instagram story.
Poole wasn’t the only Warriors player to get burned by some questionable calls. Steph Curry finished with his 10th career triple-double – 23 points, 13 rebounds and 13 assists – but it could have been more if he didn’t have three possible free throw attempts wiped out when the refs reversed a foul call on Jimmy Butler in the fourth quarter.
At that point of the game, the Warriors were down 112-109 and Curry could have tied it up with three free throws. Golden State didn’t score the rest of the way.
“It was an awful call, what did you think I was gonna say?” Curry said after the game. “I was just walking to the free-throw line, thinking that I was gonna get three free throws and have an even score with a minute and some change left. It’s tough, when I clearly felt a lot of contact. I don’t know what they saw, besides the high-five contact they talked about. You gotta be allowed to finish your motion. Especially when you slow it down in the slow-mo, it’s pretty clear there was a lot of contact. But what do I know about calls?"
The Petty King has often played with the narrative that he doesn’t get as many star calls as his contemporaries, so perhaps that final jab was a larger overall dig.
The Warriors also had another late call go the other way with 30 seconds left, when a ball originally declared theirs was rewarded to Miami after a switched call. The zebras certainly didn’t do them any favors Tuesday night.
We’ll have to see if Poole is officiated tightly in Thursday’s contest against the Orlando Magic, and if other players around the league begin to get more whistles than usual, because Tuesday was certainly out of the norm.
