Atlanta star guard Trae Young threw a hard pass and showed off a little fancy ballhandling. Ordinarily, those are good things.
Doing it against referees was frowned upon, however — and the NBA said he was ''making a mockery of the game."
Young's frustration with how the Hawks' play-in game at Orlando was going finally boiled over with 4:47 left Tuesday night, when he earned a pair of technical fouls — one for rifling a chest pass at referee James Williams, then the second moments later when he deflected the ball with his foot and then wouldn't give it up promptly to referee Pat Fraher.
''Trae Young received his first unsportsmanlike technical foul for throwing the ball at a game official," Williams told a pool reporter after the game.
Williams was then asked why Young got the second technical.
''He received his second unsportsmanlike technical foul for kicking the ball away and making a mockery of the game as we were attempting to shoot the free throw for the first technical foul and by rule when the player receives two unsportsmanlike fouls he's ejected from the game,'' Williams said.
The Hawks were down by 22 at the time and went on to lose 120-95. And postgame, Young said he did what he did to make a statement on behalf of his teammates like Dyson Daniels in a game where the Hawks thought it wasn't an even whistle.
''Sometimes when I take my frustration out on the refs it's not just for me,'' Young said. ''It's for my teammates. I see Dyson Daniels going; he may not be a household name yet, but he deserves the same amount of respect as some of these other guys. If you see a foul, you should call a foul. That's pretty much all it was for me.''
