Flavin Media

There’s no question this team’s talent should create another deep playoff run, and we’ll always do our part in finding potential flaws in the season that can send this team home come playoff time. One of these potential flaws reared its head vs. the Pelicans yesterday, when Derrick White was not granted a timeout off the inbounds pass late in the crucial seconds of the fourth quarter.

With the notable media history of Joe Mazzulla’s unique personality, there could be a fatal unawareness of how a coach’s attitude toward the NBA and their refs can affect the team’s ability to be properly granted calls and so on. You can’t help but think how this might have factored into the league’s decision to hastily call a five-second violation on White, who was clearly pretty quick to ask for a timeout.

Coaches everywhere have problems with referees all the time, but there are a number of run-ins that Mazzulla has had with the league, and talking about a lack of interest in watching other NBA games and refs being easy targets isn’t going to help. There is an art to coaching: complain enough so you get the correct calls, but restrain enough so you don’t potentially become a target. Whether Mazzulla wants to recognize it or not, it could become a bigger factor in the playoffs.

Mazzulla is an outstanding coach, and this dynamic could either factor a lot or not so much down the line, but you need to manage the refs as much as the players, especially when the whole league is emptying the tank to break you.