Steve Kerr, the Golden State Warriors coach, says there’s too much traveling in the NBA?
While he’s being Captain Obvious, he should’ve announced that airline food is terrible, traffic in Southern Cal can be a little slow, kids spend too much time on their cellphones and, oh, yeah, it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.
Kerr complained to reporters about rampant, uncalled traveling violations in the league after he was assessed a technical foul during a game against the Hornets Monday night. His sin? He protested a missed traveling violation.
“I don’t understand why we are not teaching our officials to call travel in this league,” Kerr said. " … I see five or six travels a game that aren’t called.”
If you haven’t been paying attention, this is an old problem in the league, and Kerr is the one man in the business who has brought it to the public’s attention. It is remarkable that the NBA has allowed the problem to persist given the attention it has been given in public forums.
There are dozens of YouTube and Instagram videos that are dedicated to outrageous traveling violations that officials missed or ignored. There are also dozens of videos mocking and reenacting blatant NBA travels. The NBA has become a joke on this issue.
LeBron James is The King, all right — The King of Travels. There are entire “highlight” videos of his travel violations, most of them given a pass.
Thousands of fans recognize these nightly violations — but somehow not the officials. The players run three or more strides without dribbling the ball. They walk up the court without dribbling the ball. They change their pivot foot. They pick up their dribble, then dribble again.
There’s a traveling epidemic and it’s just one of many reasons why the NBA is simply a bad version of basketball. It’s a bastardized form of the game.
“We need to enforce traveling violations, and we are not doing it,” says Kerr. “And I don’t understand why. ... (The officials) have a million things to watch, but footwork is the entire basis of the game, and we need to call traveling. It will be a much better game if we clean it up.”
Kerr has complained about this problem on and off for many years.
“How is it that everybody on earth can see these traveling violations except for the three people that we pay to do the job?” Kerr told KNBR in 2016. “I don’t get it. It’s bizarre.”
It’s an understatement to note that it is a fundamental element of basketball — players can’t run or walk with the ball without bouncing it on the floor. Without the dribble, basketball becomes something entirely different — it becomes handball with a bigger ball and a smaller goal (see Olympics).
What if soccer officials looked the other way when players advanced the ball with their hands instead of their feet? What if Major League umpires decided to make up their own strike zones, calling strikes one foot out off the plate (oh, wait, they already do)?
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The NBA traveling epidemic is made worse because the league also allows players to palm the ball (dribble from the bottom of the ball, which is really a carry, not a dribble).
Kerr snapped during Monday’s game after watching Hornets guard LeMelo Ball get away with a blatant traveling violation. As The New York Times told it, “In response, (Kerr) whipped down the stack of papers he had in his hand, earning a technical foul. Kerr then bolted to the scorer’s table, continued to scold officials for letting Ball get away with it and even pointed into the lower bowl at a few fans who also were signaling for a travel.”
Kerr later said, “You know it’s a problem when there are like a hundred fans in the stands and every coach on the sideline when I’m watching film and everyone is (signaling for it). Everyone is seeing it. So we are not teaching, as a league, our officials to look at the feet.”
As Kerr noted in the 2016 radio interview, “The rules are already sort of geared towards the offense … we give so many advantages to the offense; to let them travel and to let them carry the ball is kind of ridiculous to me.”
Kerr told reporters Monday that he has taken this issue to NBA commissioner Adam Silver and to the league’s competition committee, apparently with little effect.
“Maybe I’ll hear back from them after these comments,” Kerr said. “But for the good of the game, we need to enforce traveling violations.”