NBA rejects Steve Kerr’s timeout complaint

Steve Kerr was furious at the officials in Tuesday’s Nuggets win for missing an illegal timeout call from Christian Braun. Thursday, the NBA said Braun never called one

In the final seconds of the Denver Nuggets’ 119-115 win over the Golden State Warriors Tueday night, Denver’s Christian Braun laid out to grab an offensive rebound with his team up four points. As he rolled around, he appeared to try to call timeout, a timeout Denver didn’t have, which would have given the Warriors a technical free throw and possession.

Instead, the referees called a jump ball with 1.9 seconds left, which effectively ended the game. In his postgame news conference, Steve Kerr was furious about the non-call, telling reporters, “Braun called a timeout. Everyone saw it except the three guys we hire to do games.”

But according to the NBA’s Last Two Minute Report, a review of all the referees’ calls in the final two minutes of games that are within five points, the officials didn’t miss the call. It’s rated “CNC” for “Correct Non-Call,” with this explanation:

“As Braun (DEN) secures the loose ball, he never fully or clearly signals for a timeout and therefore a timeout is not recognized.”

It definitely looked like Braun was trying to call timeout, but it’s also hard to say that he definitively put his hands together to make the classic timeout signal. After the game, Braun claimed, “It might have looked like” he was calling timeout, but in reality, he was just “fumbling the ball a little bit on the ground.”

That being said, generally when a player rolls over with the ball like that, it’s considered a travel. But maybe not when you’re fumbling the ball a little bit on the ground. Even getting a whistle for traveling wouldn’t have helped the Warriors, who would have still been down by four points with three seconds remaining.

After the game, Nuggets coach Michael Malone seemed to tweak Kerr with his comments. He told reporters, “I hope someone has the snapshot of Christian Braun diving for that loose ball at the end, before he didn’t call timeout.”

It’s not the first NBA game this year to come down to someone calling, or not calling, a timeout when his team didn’t have one. On Nov. 12, Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra got a technical for calling timeout with one second remaining in overtime in a tie game. The Detroit Pistons won the game on the ensuing technical foul.

It would have been a longshot to win even if the referees had called a technical on Braun. Nor would the outcome have changed if the L2M Report had backed up Kerr. But with the team mired in a miserable five-game losing streak, the league’s report was just one more L for Golden State.