The Los Angeles Lakers loss to the New Orleans Pelicans on Wednesday night was not pretty in any way. Aside from the lack of defense and energy for most of the contest, things really boiled over in the first half, the peak of which was the ejection of head coach Luke Walton.
Following a borderline foul call on Kyle Kuzma, Walton stormed on the court yelling at the referees, quickly earning his sendoff. This was after a very questionable ejection of Isaiah Thomas, who was involved in a scuffle with Pelicans point guard Rajon Rondo.
Likely trying to avoid a fine, Walton declined to comment exactly what led to his ejection, but did say that there were a number of things that added up, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“There was a lot of things that I was frustrated about at that point. I just had had enough at that moment.”
Walton also explained what he saw on the Thomas-Rondo issue, admitting that the incident added to his frustrations:
“From my standpoint on that, I thought Isaiah did everything he could to not get caught up in it. [Referees] just let it keep going and going, and in my opinion took the easy way out. Just waited so they could give a double-T, as opposed to calling it as it was happening. That was part of the frustration I had building up, yeah.”
Walton has had no problems letting the officials know when he has issues and is actually second among all coaches in technical fouls (eight) this season.
With the amount of activity going on and the number of questionable calls, Walton losing his cool was understandable and almost expected. With one more game left before All-Star Weekend, Walton will have to quickly get the Lakers back on track or risk going into the break with a three-game losing streak.
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