Coach Steve Kerr’s blistering criticism of a foul call that went against his Golden State Warriors in the final 11 seconds of their loss to the host Houston Rockets was unwarranted, the NBA announced on Thursday night.
The play in question was a scramble for a loose ball after the Warriors’ Stephen Curry missed a 3-point attempt with Golden State leading 90-89 and 11.1 seconds to go. Golden State’s Gary Payton II got to the loose ball first and appeared to try to call timeout while down on the court, but he had it poked away by a late-arriving Fred VanVleet amid obvious contact between the two.
The ball squirted several feet away, and the Rockets’ Jalen Green and the Warriors’ Jonathan Kuminga tangled for possession in what looked to be a jump-ball scenario.
However, Kuminga was whistled for fouling Green, who made both free throws to give the Rockets the lead and ultimately the victory. The game was a quarterfinal matchup in the NBA Cup, and Houston advanced to take on Oklahoma City in a semifinal game at Las Vegas on Saturday.
The NBA statement backed the officials on both areas of the play, saying that Kuminga “reaches over Green in an attempt to get to the ball and pull his shoulders down.” It said Payton and VanVleet made “incidental contact with each other in pursuit of the loose ball.”
Kerr was arguing for a jump-ball call, especially as he maintained that the officials had allowed plenty of contact during the game. Other observers said Payton should have been granted the timeout.
Among Kerr’s comments, he said the foul call was “unconscionable.”
“A loose-ball situation, 80 feet from the basket, with the game on the line. I’ve never seen that,” Kerr said. “Think I saw it in college one time, 30 years ago. Never seen it in the NBA. That is unconscionable. I don’t even understand what just happened.”
He also said the game “was taken from us by a call I don’t think an elementary school referee would have made, because that guy would have had feel and said, ‘You know what? I’m not going to decide a game on a loose ball 80 feet from the basket.'”
Kerr was also at odds with officials at the end of a game in Denver on Dec. 3 when his team trailed by four points.
The coach wanted the Nuggets’ Christian Braun to get hit with a technical foul for trying to call for a timeout after coming up with a loose ball, but the team had no timeouts left. Such a call would have sent the Warriors to the free-throw line and then have the ball with 1.9 seconds left.
Instead, officials said they didn’t clearly see the player attempt to call for a timeout, so the play was ruled a jump ball, and Golden State lost that game 119-115.
–Field Level Media
