The problem for the Miami Heat this season isn’t necessarily the technical fouls. It’s the ones that come in pairs, particularly against the Portland Trail Blazers.
Two weeks ago, it was point guard Kyle Lowry called for two first-half technical fouls and ejected in Portland. Wednesday night, it was consecutive technical fouls on forward Jimmy Butler that led to his first-half ejection at FTX Arena against the Blazers.
With the Heat winning both games, the ire was toned down by the time it came to postgame interviews, but there remained a degree of confusion.
Butler was ejected with 2:28 to play in Wednesday’s second period, after a successful basket and a foul called on the Blazers center Jusuf Nurkic.
An incensed Butler, who had not converted a basket until that play, immediately complained to referee Mousa Dagher, who had little option based on Butler’s ire but to call the first technical foul.
Then, with Butler still angered, but moving away from the confrontation, referee Courtney Kirkland signaled the second technical foul on Butler, which mandated an immediate ejection.
“Eerily, it’s happened about the same time in both games, right?” coach Erik Spoelstra said, with the Lowry and Butler ejections coming in the closing ticks of second periods. “I disagreed with both of ’em. I thought they both should have gotten a technical. I don’t think either one of them should have gotten thrown out.”
Spoelstra said he also appreciated the times, with referees, like players, dealing with COVID protocols.
“But I get it,” Spoelstra said. “Like everybody’s just on edge right now. We’re going through two years of this. Things are getting competitive. There’s just a lot of emotions.
“I thought that was a pretty quick trigger coming from somebody on the other side of the court. I thought it was defused. I thought he had an explosion, a real emotion. And then Jimmy walked away, walked away.”
Butler was not made available for comment in the wake of the incident, but Spoelstra addressed the comportment of his veteran forward.
“He has great emotional control after an outburst, and he handled it,” Spoelstra said. “You’re allowed to have one of those. But they obviously saw it a different way and there’s no point in trying to debate it. They’ll fight you on that.”
Kirkland, the crew chief, addressed the incident postgame with a pool reporter.
That transcript, as provided by the NBA:
Q: Was it Butler’s words or aggression that caused the first technical foul?
Kirkland: “It was both. The aggressive manner in which he approached Mousa Dagher and the profanity that he yelled at him resulted in the first technical foul.”
Q: What was the reasoning for the second technical foul?
Kirkland: “The second one was the fact that he yelled egregious profanity at Mousa, and that’s why he was given the second technical foul.”
Q: Why the immediacy of the second technical foul?
Kirkland: “Because of the egregiousness of the profanity he yelled at Mousa.”
