Mike Brown Is The Latest Head Coach To Unleash An All Time Postgame Rant Calling Out The NBA's Refs For Their Bullshit

Paras Griffin. Getty Images.

In today's NBA the stakes continue to get raised when it comes to head coaching rants after a game. We all saw Darko Rajaković of the Raptors lose his shit over the Lakers getting a billion FTs (nothing new), we saw Joe Mazzulla of the Celtics find a creative way to tell the refs and the league office to go fuck themselves without getting fined by using The Town, and last night it was Mike Brown's turn to step up to the podium and give us a rant of his own.

It revolved around this ejection

That's a coach that will ride and die with his players. He felt like the KIngs were getting shafted and he wasn't going to just sit back and take it. I mean he went AT that ref and certainly made sure he earned every bit of that ejection. 

After the game, I was curious what type of rant we would get. Would Brown say fuck the $25K and unleash hell, or would he go with a more measured approach? The answer was actually a bit of both

I'll tell you what, I don't think I've ever seen a head coach bring out a laptop with players queued up so he could show the inconsistency of the officials in real time for us all to see. You know that's what he did immediately after getting tossed too, which makes me love it even more. To me, something like this is way more effective than what we saw Darko Rajaković do because that rant felt more like sour grapes. This one? With actual evidence and a calm and collected tone? That's how you do it. 

The crazy thing is Mike Brown is 10000% correct. NBA officiating is the least consistent thing we have when it comes to the NBA. Different rules for different players, one crew looks at something one way, and another crew something different. Everyone knows that Dame gets that contact call, it's nothing new. You'll see that 3-5 times a game from him. It's one of those calls that usually disappears in the playoffs, but seeing as how it's January and the regular season, you just have to live with it. What makes it frustrating for teams is you better not expect that call the other way. That's the Dame treatment. 

As great as that rant may have been, I do think the NBA will throw a $25K fine his way for openly calling out the officials like this (even if he's right), but that's not the biggest problem here. The problem of course is what happened the rest of this game after Brown got tossed. You see it's hard to really care about the lack of consistency with foul calls and how you got boned, when your team had EVERY CHANCE to put the Bucks away in OT.

All you had to do was make your FTs. Malik Monk AND De'Aaron Fox both had their chances in the final seconds of OT, and they gagged

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YIKES. 

When you have your chance to bury Damian Lillard & Co, you have to do it. You cannot waste those opportunities and give them life. Why? Because Dame Time exists. It's real. That is a guy who is built for the moment, and it didn't take long for him to show the Kings why

What a disaster for the Kings and a prayer for the Bucks. It's why I always talk about how important FTs are, especially late ones when you can close a team out. For Malik Monk to morph into Grant Williams and miss them both, then for Fox as the best player to choke and go 1-2, only for nobody to really contest Dame's game winner, that's the Basketball Gods simply doing their thing.

So while Mike Brown may have a point about the foul difference and how inconsistent things may have been, that rant hits a little less when you then remember the Kings still have every chance to end this game and leave with a win, but they choked. If something shady had gone down that cost the Kings this game, say contact to the head while someone was taking a shot that was called a foul and immediately overturned despite everyone with eyes seeing there was contact, I'd get it. But unfortunately, that's not what happened.

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It doesn't make Mike Brown wrong, it just loses a little juice when you see how they choked away this game. 

Great rant though, and I encourage other head coaches to bust out the film to call out the official's bullshit. In that regard, he's right on the money. The tape doesn't lie, even if the league often does try to cover their own ass in the L2M. 

Seriously though, just make your FTs. That's gotta sting and makes this loss 1000x worse.