The NBA referees' union said it deplores a decision not to suspend Atlanta Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer after he made contact with an official during a loss in Cleveland on Saturday night.
NBA vice president Kiki VanDeWeghe fined Budenholzer $25,000 on Monday for what he determined was "incidental" contact with referee Ben Taylor during the second quarter of the Cavs' 109-97 victory. It appeared Budenholzer was arguing a non-call on the previous possession. Taylor stopped the game and immediately ejected Budenholzer after Budenholzer took several steps onto the court to argue during live play.
"Referees operate in an environment in which an influential NBA team owner has repeatedly mocked the efficacy of fines as means to change bad behavior," Lee Seham, the National Basketball Referees Association general counsel, said in a statement.
"Recent league precedent dictated that a coach who aggressively charged onto the floor during live action and physically interfered with a referee would be suspended. We are now operating at a lower level with less transparency, degraded safety, and diminished respect for the game. Coaches should compete by creating better teams, not by physically intimidating officials."
In a statement released Monday night, Budenholzer said he has issued an apology to Taylor.
"With the league's permission, I have reached out to and apologized to Ben Taylor for what happened in the game versus Cleveland," Budenholzer said. "Ben is an excellent young referee who is a valuable member of the NBA family. We all understand that any contact -- including incidental contact -- with an official is unacceptable. I accept the NBA's fine and look forward to putting this situation in the past."
Reacting to Seham's statement, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, for whom Budenholzer served as an assistant coach from 1996 to 2013, said: "I think it's just a case of an anonymous suit trying to gain 15 minutes of stardom more than anything. It's comical."
The last time the NBA suspended a coach for on-court treatment of an official was in 2012, when Lakers coach Mike Brown was suspended for a game after making contact with an official. In 2009, Scott Skiles, then of the Milwaukee Bucks, also was disciplined for confronting an official on the floor.
The NBA has routinely fined coaches for public comments on officiating, foul language toward an official or not leaving the floor in a timely manner after an ejection.
Budenholzer told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution he did not intend to make contact with Taylor.
"I was very close to him," Budenholzer told the paper. "That seems like that could be the reason why he threw me out after just a single technical. If there was any contact it would be totally unintentional. If there is contact, I'm sure that's why he made the judgment call that he did."
In his statement, Seham appears to have been referring to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who has routinely been fined for criticism of officials over the past decade. Cuban, who has been fined more than $2 million by the NBA during his tenure, regularly matches his fines for criticism of officials and donates the excess to charity.
Over the summer, the NBA and the NBRA reached an agreement on a new seven-year collective bargaining agreement.
Information from ESPN's Michael C. Wright was used in this report.