Trae Young Became The Latest NBA Star To Fall Victim To One Of The Softest Ejections You'll Ever See

Kevin C. Cox. Getty Images.

As awesome as the start of the NBA season has been, there's been one glaring issue that for whatever reason Adam Silver refuses to do anything about. We're currently witnessing a product where NBA officials aren't just drunk with power, they are taking matters into their own hands and impacting games all because they get emotional. We're seeing star after star get thrown out of games for no apparent reason, and it's starting to become a legitimate issue.

Through the first quarter of the season, the list is already pretty crazy. We had Giannis get ejected for a 0.5 second staredown after a nice dunk

Then came Nikola Jokic, who was on the wrong end of one of the weakest ejections we've had all season

A few weeks later, it was Jayson Tatum who got tossed for doing literally nothing

A week after that, it was Jaylen Brown's turn to get tossed, by a ref who was on the completely other side of the court who was caught in his feelings 

Not a single one of these plays warranted a 2nd tech, and as you can see there's still plenty of time in the game when these calls happen. It 1000% impacts the product, and for what? Because a ref was called out on their bullshit? These are the biggest stars in the game, the players that fans spend a ton of money to come see and yet NBA refs somehow think everyone is there to see them or something. It's a problem and everyone knows it.

Well now it's time to add Trae Young to this list after his ridiculous ejection last night

Was this a foul? You could make the case that there's some contact from both sides, but in most cases the star is getting this call, especially at home. Yes Trae hooked Watson, but there was also contact from Watson on that play. So right off the bat, it's not crazy that Trae Young brought it up during a stoppage that he was fouled. I know Young foul baits a lot, but a foul is a foul. He didn't show up the ref or go crazy complaining, if anything he looked pretty calm. Unfortunately for Trae, he did the #1 thing you apparently cannot do in an NBA game. 

He clapped.

You may remember, Jayson Tatum has also been given a tech for clapping

Like we've seen so many times before, the ref probably knew he was wrong, found an avenue to give Trae a tech for talking about how they fucked up, and they took it. As a result, Trae Young lost his shit, because why wouldn't he? He didn't do anything. He clapped. The refs then compounded things by giving a tech to Quinn Snyder all because he wanted to talk about it which felt a little unnecessary. Were they done? Of course not!

Why stop with just 2 techs when you could also throw Trae Young out? 

What we're seeing is time and time again an official either misses a brutal call or makes a terrible call and then they can't handle being called on their shit, so they abuse their power of techs and throw the guys out who don't let that shit slide. I have no idea how Adam Silver sees this happen to the biggest names in his sport pretty much every night and thinks there's nothing that has to be done. Then you compare these ejections to the reactions we see guys like LeBron or Draymond Green have only to get nothing and none of it makes any sense. 

I get that there will be instances where a call is missed or was wrong, it's sports. These are humans. But you can't be this bad and then not expect players to react, and then when their reaction isn't even that bad to still be throwing them out of games is a joke. Maybe get better at officiating? Maybe hold these guys accountable for being terrible? Maybe have any sort of consistency when it comes to player reactions? I feel like those aren't outrageous expectations to have as a fan. 

Maybe I'm just being a prisoner of the moment, but I can't remember a time when so many stars were ejected from games to start a season for doing what we've seen the stars above do. It feels worse. The leash is shorter, the justification for an ejection is weaker, and it feels like refs are more emotional than ever. It wouldn't shock me one bit if Trae's second tech gets rescinded like we've seen happen before in these instances, but what good does that do? At that moment, the damage was already done.

So please, Adam, wake the fuck up and fix your officiating problem. There's no point in trying to pretend there isn't one, and I'm not sure how many more stars need to be tossed before the league actually does something about it but this is starting to get a little outrageous.