Luka Dončić spent Wednesday night in Sacramento playing referee bodyguard. He spent Friday night in Los Angeles doing the exact thing he'd just gotten a stranger thrown out of a building for. That's hypocrisy, and it belongs to Dončić alone.
Start with what happened in Sacramento on November 5, during the Lakers' 116-103 win over the Kings. A ball went out of bounds, a spectator retrieved it and threw it toward referee Chelisa Painter, striking her arm. Dončić didn't let it slide. He alerted officials and arena security, the man was escorted from his courtside seat, and Dončić was heard asking, "What the f*** are you doing?" Afterward he explained it plainly: "He just tossed it really strong, the ball, toward the ref."
Fine. Defend the officials. Nobody wants fans using an NBA referee for target practice. But then came November 6 in Los Angeles, against Portland. First quarter, 6.5 seconds left, Jrue Holiday fouls him, and as Dončić falls out of bounds he throws the ball toward referee Sean Wright's leg. He got an immediate technical. Same physics as the night before: ball meets referee. One of those acts cost a paying customer his seat and his night. The other cost Dončić a technical foul in a game he stayed in long enough to drop a season-high 53.
A fan got frog-marched out of Golden 1 Center for a hard pass that grazed an official's arm. A superstar fired a basketball off a different official's leg and kept playing. It comes down to power, who has it and who doesn't. Dončić got to stand on both sides of that line inside 24 hours.
A player hammered on a drive, falling out of bounds, reacting in a split second, is a different animal than a spectator reaching down from the stands to chuck a ball at an official. The in-game frustration is human. The two acts don't have to be identical to both matter. Dončić is the one who decided a ball thrown at a referee was an ejectable offense, loudly, personally, on camera. He set that bar in Sacramento. He cleared it from the wrong side in Los Angeles.
He's no stranger to the price of this habit. Back in 2020, with Dallas, the league fined him $15,000 for throwing the ball off the legs of a game official during a loss to the Clippers. This is a pattern for him, and he knows exactly what the league does about it.
He didn't pretend otherwise afterward. "Of course, today I got another technical foul, but I really wasn't trying to. I know there are things I still need to improve," he said. Good. That's more self-awareness than the Sacramento version of Luka showed the night before, when he appointed himself the enforcer of how referees get treated.
You can argue the fan's ejection was an overreaction in the first place. Plenty of people did. You can argue the officials are inconsistent for tossing a stranger and merely teeing up the star. All of that is worth a fight. None of it lets Dončić off the hook. He's the one who set the standard, and he's the one who broke it. Play sheriff in Sacramento and you'd better holster your own weapon in LA. He didn't.
