Los Angeles Lakers head coach Luke Walton blasted the referees after the team’s 107-103 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks on Friday, complaining about a team official who he felt inappropriately got involved in a scuffle between the two teams.
Luke Walton on Bucks staffer who shoved Brandon Ingram: ‘Don’t touch my damn players’
Three players were ejected from the game due to the shoving match that occurred late in the third quarter. D’Angelo Russell and Greg Monroe both received double technical fouls, immediately ejecting them from the game, while Nick Young was given a single technical. Because he had received one earlier in the game, he was also ejected.
Here is video of the incident, which started with a hard foul and a shove from Young:
Walton told media he rewatched the scuffle right before speaking with them and didn’t understand how the referees dealt out punishments.
“I’m going to need an explanation on it because it made no sense to me,” Walton told reporters. “They told me D’Angelo got kicked out for escalating the situation. But D’Angelo only responded after Monroe had grabbed Nick (Young) by the neck and thrown him. If D’Angelo didn’t push him, I would’ve been pissed off at D’Angelo. He did the right thing. So for the NBA to say that the two of them did the same thing and just canceled each other out is absolute crap to me because D’Angelo shoved (Monroe) in the back; Monroe grabbed (Young) by the neck.”
Walton was also indignant about a Bucks team employee who sprinted out into the scrum and pushed Ingram away from the players. You can see him here in the gray suit, with the shove happening about 12 seconds in:
Walton clearly wasn’t OK with this:
“One of their employees is on the floor, and he grabs Brandon by the jersey and shoves him,” Walton said. “Not holding him back, shoves him. And that doesn’t get addressed either? If there’s nothing wrong with that, then I have no problem finding some people to hire on our staff. The next time we get in a skirmish, I’ll keep all my players back because the fact that they don’t get in trouble for that, the refs don’t say anything about that, and he puts his hands on one of our players? He works for them. He can touch their players all he wants. Don’t touch my damn players.”
While the coach was clearly trying to keep the peace, you can understand Walton’s anger at the shove. We’ll see how the league decides to handle this moving forward.
