Austin Rivers ejection

[Plain Old Josh]

I'm actually okay with it. The two players had already been T'd up, and told to stop the antics. Rivers clearly pretended he was going to throw an elbow at Lance. It's a soft call, but probably falls within the taunting rules. Should a player be allowed to pretend to throw a punch at an opponent? As long as he doesn't make contact it's all good?

Dude, Rivers always uses fakes like that when he has the ball.

Your idea that he was trying to intimidate Lance or something is purely your own conjecture.

We have to go off the physical evidence. It was a meek pump fake. He barely even moved. He didn’t extend his arm.

You can’t start imparting your own opinions about WHY he made such a weak little pump fake.

Nothing in the rules says a guy should be ejected for a fake. And on replay it literally is a fake that makes no contact with anything.

Let’s also ignore the fact that Tony brothers did nothing initially, then decides to blow the whistle 5-10 seconds later for no apparent reason.

The more angles I see, the worse this ejection looks.

[Perseus1966]

Brothers and Foster must go ,they are terrible.

[ryan in Maine]

What the actual ****? What a humdrum play.

You see that in literally every game lol.

[JimmyPlopper]

Brothers and Foster must go ,they are terrible.

When they get paired up together you know that there will be a lot of questionable calls and thats really a shame

[MrBigShot]

You are allowed to fake/swing the ball through in a triple threat position. This call is fine/suspension worthy for the ref.

[JimmyPlopper]

I actually don’t have a problem with that. I assume there was a double tech from the initial exchange in the corner, and then Rivers comes straight back down and fakes an elbow at Stephenson for guarding him close? Yeah you can’t do that.

The only thing wrong with Brothers there is that he has the reaction time of a refrigerated jar of honey.

You just lost your right to post. Close your account and don't come back.

Sent from my SM-G988U using RealGM mobile app

[Duke4life831]

I'm actually okay with it. The two players had already been T'd up, and told to stop the antics. Rivers clearly pretended he was going to throw an elbow at Lance. It's a soft call, but probably falls within the taunting rules. Should a player be allowed to pretend to throw a punch at an opponent? As long as he doesn't make contact it's all good?

Dude, Rivers always uses fakes like that when he has the ball.

Your idea that he was trying to intimidate Lance or something is purely your own conjecture.

We have to go off the physical evidence. It was a meek pump fake. He barely even moved. He didn’t extend his arm.

You can’t start imparting your own opinions about WHY he made such a weak little pump fake.

Nothing in the rules says a guy should be ejected for a fake. And on replay it literally is a fake that makes no contact with anything.

Let’s also ignore the fact that Tony brothers did nothing initially, then decides to blow the whistle 5-10 seconds later for no apparent reason.

The more angles I see, the worse this ejection looks.

There is absolutely nothing abnormal about his movements on this play. The fact he got a tech for this, that the other refs didnt step in, and that Brothers went to the replay and watched it over again and stayed with the tech is beyond laughable. I agree 100% that it is suspension worthy.

We have the replay system for situations just like this. I get it if from his angle he thought Rivers was trying to throw an elbow or something and maybe connected. But that is why you go to the monitor and double check. I honestly dont know what's worse, Brothers going to the replay monitor and watching the replays and

1. Thinking to himself, yup that is a Tech worthy play
or
2. Thinking to himself, damn I made a bad call, but too late now. I cant come out and say I was wrong, so I need to dig my heels in.

Both are horrible options and really the only two options here.

[NbaAllDay]

Title is slightly disingenuous as he was already T'd up just before (100% warranted) directly due to an altercation with Stephenson. So any Tec from that is 100% tossing him out.

In saying that, crazy call made and at the very least, wouldn't you wait till a stoppage and review, if he actual legit connected then you can maybe decide to toss him, otherwise it's continue as is.

There is a little more context to this than it's made out, but either way it's a horrible reactive decision.

To add to this, I'm making assumptions obviously but chain of events in Refs head.

- Both players get a Tec due to scuffle/pushing eachother
- Rather heated on both ends, game is also close.
- Wants to avoid anything from escalating
- To avoid escalation ref wants to "take a stand"
- Sees a 'fake elbow', possibly questioned if it hit Stephenson or not (due to his Stephensons overreaction)
- Has a think about it, weights up the above, makes the call for a Tec = Instant Toss.

His Judgement is bad, and the call was really bad, however It's not a hugeeeee Leap to see why he made the choice, especially if you consider what could happen on the next play if Austin did actually connect on the elbow and people escalated it from there.

Again, bad bad call but at least I can understand how it got there.

[Castle Black]

Good lord that’s atrocious. Embarrassing from the league.

Still not quite as bad as Duncan getting ejected for laughing but this is not far behind. What a joke.

[Appostis]

..that's bad.

[MotownMadness]

Title is slightly disingenuous as he was already T'd up just before (100% warranted) directly due to an altercation with Stephenson. So any Tec from that is 100% tossing him out.

In saying that, crazy call made and at the very least, wouldn't you wait till a stoppage and review, if he actual legit connected then you can maybe decide to toss him, otherwise it's continue as is.

There is a little more context to this than it's made out, but either way it's a horrible reactive decision.

To add to this, I'm making assumptions obviously but chain of events in Refs head.

- Both players get a Tec due to scuffle/pushing eachother
- Rather heated on both ends, game is also close.
- Wants to avoid anything from escalating
- To avoid escalation ref wants to "take a stand"
- Sees a 'fake elbow', possibly questioned if it hit Stephenson or not (due to his Stephensons overreaction)
- Has a think about it, weights up the above, makes the call for a Tec = Instant Toss.

His Judgement is bad, and the call was really bad, however It's not a hugeeeee Leap to see why he made the choice, especially if you consider what could happen on the next play if Austin did actually connect on the elbow and people escalated it from there.

Again, bad bad call but at least I can understand how it got there.

The video shows the first tech as well, i dont think anyone is confused on that part

[NbaAllDay]

Title is slightly disingenuous as he was already T'd up just before (100% warranted) directly due to an altercation with Stephenson. So any Tec from that is 100% tossing him out.

In saying that, crazy call made and at the very least, wouldn't you wait till a stoppage and review, if he actual legit connected then you can maybe decide to toss him, otherwise it's continue as is.

There is a little more context to this than it's made out, but either way it's a horrible reactive decision.

To add to this, I'm making assumptions obviously but chain of events in Refs head.

- Both players get a Tec due to scuffle/pushing eachother
- Rather heated on both ends, game is also close.
- Wants to avoid anything from escalating
- To avoid escalation ref wants to "take a stand"
- Sees a 'fake elbow', possibly questioned if it hit Stephenson or not (due to his Stephensons overreaction)
- Has a think about it, weights up the above, makes the call for a Tec = Instant Toss.

His Judgement is bad, and the call was really bad, however It's not a hugeeeee Leap to see why he made the choice, especially if you consider what could happen on the next play if Austin did actually connect on the elbow and people escalated it from there.

Again, bad bad call but at least I can understand how it got there.

The video shows the first tech as well, i dont think anyone is confused on that part

"Austin Rivers Ejected for faking an Elbow" is the title I am referring to, and at literal face value is the misleading part.

[nomansland]

I actually don’t have a problem with that. I assume there was a double tech from the initial exchange in the corner, and then Rivers comes straight back down and fakes an elbow at Stephenson for guarding him close? Yeah you can’t do that.

The only thing wrong with Brothers there is that he has the reaction time of a refrigerated jar of honey.

What? He had the ball. Faked a swing through or a pass. No connection. Absolutely nothing wrong with what Rivers did.

There’s no way he’d swing through that space with Stephenson there like that, Rivers pumped the elbow and knew what he was doing.

The worst take I ever read on RealGM was that Ginobili isn't white because he's from Argentina.

Yours is the second worst take. You know you're allowed to move around in basketball, right?

[Sofia]

What? He had the ball. Faked a swing through or a pass. No connection. Absolutely nothing wrong with what Rivers did.

There’s no way he’d swing through that space with Stephenson there like that, Rivers pumped the elbow and knew what he was doing.

The worst take I ever read on RealGM was that Ginobili isn't white because he's from Argentina.

Yours is the second worst take. You know you're allowed to move around in basketball, right?

Of course you’re allowed to move, but look how much space Stephenson occupies. Why would you deliberately swing the ball into the the opponents body? I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the ref to think that the elbow fake (not ball fake) was directed at Stephenson.

[Jhawk03]

The more angles I see, the worse this ejection looks.

[/quote]

Can somebody explain why Lance was yelling and pointing after Rivers passed the ball? There must be a rule that we all know nothing about.

[nomansland]

There’s no way he’d swing through that space with Stephenson there like that, Rivers pumped the elbow and knew what he was doing.

The worst take I ever read on RealGM was that Ginobili isn't white because he's from Argentina.

Yours is the second worst take. You know you're allowed to move around in basketball, right?

Of course you’re allowed to move, but look how much space Stephenson occupies. Why would you deliberately swing the ball into the the opponents body? I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the ref to think that the elbow fake (not ball fake) was directed at Stephenson.

It's not a foul to do that, period. Brothers obviously thought Rivers made contact and because there was static earlier jumped to the conclusion that it was intentional. Not only did Brothers misread the situation, he completely missed the call.

Can't believe you're even arguing it.

[FreeThrowLine]

[AussieCeltic]

Reffing is a very difficult job (true)
However, Brothers doesn't seem to ref to the standard of his peers or general reasonability

Celtics had a record of 4-14 with Brothers reffing while their usual record was always around the .550+ mark. A real anomaly

[Diop]

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This one was just as confusing

[JN61]

I really hate when refs have such a big egos they can't walk back their mistakes and only way for them to walk back their mistakes is to make some soft call on the next possession. This is the part of the NBA I really dislike.

Read on Twitter

This one was just as confusing

Eh. This is at least tech worthy. Nothing Rivers did is...
I guess they game him tech for elbowing him and another one from fighting for no reason which was justified absolutely.