NBA Cup Friday Gave Us The Weakest NBA Ejection You'll See All Season

Thank God these weren't the refs we had for those epic KMS/Barstool NY basketball games. 

I mean, this has to be one of the softest ejections in NBA history. 

This came in the third quarter, Bulls and Heat, NBA Cup Friday. And you know it's an NBA Cup Friday because all these teams have disgusting courts. 

BYU blew out Wisconsin on the Utah Jazz NBA Cup Court Friday afternoon, and all of a sudden, I want a Grimace Shake.

So, third quarter in Chicago, Bulls down 19, and Kevin Huerter ... I'll call it taps the ball towards referee Che Flores. There's no intent to injure here—just a guy frustrated by a call. The ball hits off Flores' leg, and because he's making a call towards the scorer's table, he's not sure what's happened.

But here comes Tony Brothers to the rescue! You can see Brothers make the ejection sign right away in this view of the play. 

Under Section 5 "Conduct" in the NBA Rulebook sub-section P, it states, "The deliberate act of throwing the ball or any object at an official by a player, coach, trainer, or other team bench person is a technical foul and violators are subject to ejection from the game."

Give me a break. He's not throwing the ball at the official - he's hitting it over to him. Maybe with a little more sass than usual because he didn't like the call, but there was no anger or malice here. Is it deliberate?I guess - but he's just trying to get the ball towards the official.

“I didn’t get much explanation,” Huerter said to the media after the game. “Apologies to that ref, think it was Che. It wasn’t malicious, and it wasn’t intended to be aggressive toward her. I don’t know the rule, so I guess now I’m aware.”  

No apologies necessary, Kevin. You did nothing wrong. Tony Brothers overreacted here. Soft, soft, soft.

Keep Brothers away from any Barstool basketball games. I mean, how many ejections would we have had just from this sequence before Game 3 in July?

Let them play. Well, in this case, let them tap the ball back to the official, and don't eject a guy when the ball accidentally hits the guy.