Eject button stuck

Nikola Jokic gets booted for backtalk. Draymond Green gets booted for ... uh, punching Jusuf Nurkic in the face.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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The NBA is trying hard to crack down on what can only be referred to as “backtalk” from players, including stars. Simultaneously, the NBA is trying to force stars to play in as many regular season games as possible by instituting a policy banning non-injury absences from nationally televised games and by placing minimum limits on postseason awards.

So you have the NBA, for example, telling the Denver Nuggets that Nikola Jokic needs to play in nearly all of the team’s games while you have NBA referees ejecting Nikola Jokic after a single technical for some damn backtalk.

So bad the crowd booed the refs for ejecting the opponents’ best player.

After the game, Jokic acknowledged that he said a “magic word” that is sometimes a technical and sometimes not. (It’s reported that he said something to the effect of “call the foul, motherf—ker,” which meshes with Michael Malone postgame comments.) I suspect it’s almost never an instant ejection … because rarely are single words instant ejections. Because, you know, while officials do have wide latitude to run the games as they see fit, the standard operating procedure is that ejections only happen after

1. A Flagrant 2

2. A fight

3. Two technicals or Flagrant-1s

To see an official decide that a player — a star, even — who talks back while running down the court has done something equivalent to, I don’t know, let me pull out a random example, punching an opponent in the head and then booting that player — that’s wild.

What other sports league in the world regularly ejects its best players from competition over hurt feelings or offense by the game officials? How many times has Messi been red carded, or Ohtani ejected, or Patrick Mahomes booted?

It has been noted that Chicago is the city with the largest population of people with Serbian heritage in the world outside of Serbia itself. Jokic plays in Chicago once a year. This season, he gets one half of a game. The NBA is an entertainment league, so whether the league office or the officials like it or not, that actually matters. A collection of possibly new NBA fans came out to watch the best player in the world, and they were robbed of that opportunity by a sensitive official.

This is a problem. It might be one of the bigger problems facing the NBA right now. Get the officials’ emotions under control.

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Save Your Ejections For This Dude

Dear NBA Referees Who Really Love Ejecting Players With Lots of Hardware: just wait until you call a Warriors game. As long as he’s not already suspended, there’s a good chance you’ll get a chance to correctly eject Draymond Green from a game.

Here’s Green turning to swing on Jusuf Nurkic during an inbound play.

My favorite part is a Warrior on the bench directly in front of the play — it looks like Trayce Jackson-Davis, but I can’t tell for sure — raising his hands like “what?” after the punch. Is he asking why the hell Green decked Nurkic? Or is he asking why there was a whistle? I’m legitimately curious!

In any case, this was so egregious that not even Green defended himself after rewatching it. In fact, he apologized to Nurkic, saying he was only trying to “sell the call” as Nurkic grabbed Green’s hip, and inadvertantly struck Nurkic on the spin. Translation: Green was flopping to get a foul on Nurkic — who is large, strong and quite physical, to be fair — and accidentally punched the Bosnian Beast in the head instead. Oops.

I’m actually curious as to whether this draws a big ol’ suspension after Green’s rather muted reaction and mea culpa. Punching people in the head one of the more egregious on-court infractions, and Green is a perpetual line-crosser. But the Adam Silver regime has been relatively light in punching incidents like this that stem from on-court action. I think this could be an exception given the frequency with which Green crosses the line.

In any case, it appears Nurkic either spoke to reporters before Green, or he heard Green’s apology but then decided to be the coldest man alive. Because these quotes are incredible and a little mean.

“What’s going on with him? I don’t know. Personally I feel like that brother needed help. I’m glad he didn’t try to choke me.” SHEESH.

The Warriors aren’t good enough to survive playing without Green in particular games or stretches of season. Stephen Curry is an impossibly deferential teammate and never criticizes his guys. Even critiques of a player like Jordan Poole were only done in the heat of the moment with body language. So I suspect Curry will continue to roll with it. But you wonder if new GM Mike Dunleavy will decide he needs to protect Curry’s ability to lead this team back to the playoffs and beyond and find a way to move on from the erratic, unreliable Green … if another team would even take him.