Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown made it clear after Game 7 of a first-round playoff loss to the Philadelphia 76ers that he was not happy with the officiating, pointing a finger, specifically, at Joel Embiid. “Embiid put a lot of pressure on us,” Brown said from the podium on Saturday night. “On all of our bigs and our guards. We didn’t really have an answer for him. We tried a bunch of different things. He’s a big body. He also was flopping around. He got some extra calls, and they rewarded him for that, but that’s the league we’re in.”
A day later, Brown took things even further. On Sunday, he hosted a stream on Twitch in which he spoke about Boston’s Game 7 loss and shared clips from it. In that stream, he once again went after Embiid for flopping. “I mean, this is my personal opinion on basketball. Some of y’all might disagree, you know what I mean? But argue with your grandma. Flopping has ruined our game,” Brown said. “Joel Embiid is a great player, one of the best bigs in f—ing basketball history, flops. He knows it. This ain’t breaking news.”
Brown committed two notable fourth-quarter fouls on Embiid, one of which saw Embiid pulled to the ground, the other of which saw Brown end up there. Embiid got the whistle on both occasions, but overall, his free-throw attempts were more or less in line with his regular-season average. Embiid attempted 10 free throws per 36 minutes during the regular season, and he took 11 in 39 Game 7 minutes. Whether or not he flops to get those calls is a matter of debate, especially since the NBA has largely stopped enforcing flopping technical fouls. But it’s not as though he drew calls he typically wouldn’t, and a smaller player like Brown is certainly vulnerable to getting whistled when defending a center like Embiid.
Calling out a player is one thing. Calling out officials, and by proxy, the league, is quite another. On the same stream, Brown accused the referees of having an “agenda” against him.
“Why are you targeting me? They clearly had an agenda,” he said. “Maybe because I spoke, I was critical of the refs in the regular season. So you know how they responded? ‘We’re gonna call every, you’re gonna lead the playoffs in offensive fouls.’ That was the response from the officiating crew.
“You could clearly tell. I’ve actually spoken to some refs and they said it was an agenda going into each game. ‘Any time Jaylen brings his arm up, just from reputation, just call it.’ Paul George does the same thing. Jalen Brunson does the same thing. I can go down the list. It’s a basketball play, whether y’all believe it or not. Everybody does that when you drive, especially if you’ve got bodies on you. But Philly took advantage of it, and they took advantage of the officiating. It cost us to some degree. I’ve been doing it all regular season, not a problem. Now, all of a sudden, it’s an offensive foul every time. Keep that same energy with everybody else. That’s all I’ve gotta say.”
Brown was called for 10 offensive fouls in the series, largely for using his off-arm to create space. That severely limited his effectiveness as a driver. In the regular season, Brown averaged 13.2 points on 19.1 drives per game, but against Philadelphia, he fell down to 8.9 points on 18.1 drives per game. Boston had a 3-1 series lead before losing the final three games, and the Celtics played without Jayson Tatum in Game 7 on Saturday.
In a sense, he does have a point. He is far from the only player who consistently uses his off-arm to clear out defenders as a driver. George, Brunson and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander are notorious offenders in that regard. It’s a tricky foul to call in the moment, and enforcement in the regular season was certainly sparse. Brown committed the second-most offensive fouls in the NBA during the regular season, but at 40 in 71 appearances, his per-game average more than doubled from 0.56 per game to 1.43 per game. The rest of the playoffs will show us if the league plans to enforce off-arm usage for drivers more on the rest of the league or if Brown simply committed more egregious offensive fouls than others have.
While the comments were not made to reporters or during an official NBA press availability, Brown could certainly be fined by the league for his remarks. A player accusing an official of having an agenda is not the sort of thing the league tends to take lightly. Earlier in the playoffs, Devin Booker was fined $35,000 for criticizing the officials after Game 2 of Phoenix’s first-round loss to Oklahoma City.
