Jaylen Brown Refuses To Back Down And Continued To Go After The NBA's Glaring Officiating Problem On His Twitch Stream

Brian Babineau. Getty Images.

Following the Celts rather embarrassing loss to the Jazz the other night, the story wasn't really about the result. Sure, it was gross, but that certainly will not be the last time we see something like that happen over the next 74 games.

The bigger story was around what took place in the final 40 seconds involving Jaylen Brown and some of the most inexplicable officiating incompetence you could ever possibly see in an NBA game. I'm sure you've seen it by now, but I'm referencing this play/moment

I'm not kidding when I say that is probably the most obvious call an official can make. There's no doubt about the fact that this was a trip, which in the NBA is an automatic foul. Considering it was a 1 point game with 40 seconds left, I'd say it's pretty important! Instead, no one blew the whistle, they all told Jaylen Brown they "didn't see anything" (a lie), and to make matters worse, when the crew chief was asked about it in the pool report after the game, he doubled down and said Jaylen Brown slipped.

That of course led to Jaylen's postgame comments, where he went in on the officials for being the worst to ever do it

and it really was vintage gaslighting by the refs. Every single person who is willing to be objective and sees that play knows it's a foul. Stop telling us Jaylen Brown slipped when he was clearly tripped. Just admit you fucked up! Instead, they tried to gaslight all of us in an effort to convince us that we were actually seeing something different.

You know who didn't agree? The NBA. Tough look for that ref crew chief to double down like that, only for the NBA to come in the next day and admit they fucked up and blew the call in their L2M report, which directly impacted the result

Imagine that!

Now, one would think that after the game, the postgame rant and the L2M report that this would be the end of this story. You would be wrong.

Jaylen Brown most definitely wasn't done, and he went even harder about everything on his Twitch stream. I'm going to warn you now it's a 6 minute clip, but in my opinion it's worth watching. I can't remember the last time we had a player of Jaylen's stature in the league, a player who plays for the most successful franchise in league history doing something like this. He went in on the officials, how the games are called, preferential treatment, etc. To do it in such a public forum was definitely new

Again, he's right. 

We all know the games are not called equally. We all know that certain guys get an insane whistle for whatever reason. To deny that would be silly. That's not even a new thing, that's how it's always been but that doesn't make it right. This isn't even about that specific loss to UTA. As I said the other night, the loss is whatever in what is obviously a gap year. But that doesn't excuse what we're seeing from officials. Again, this is not just a Celtics and Jaylen Brown thing. Just listen to what Doc Rivers said after the Bucks game the other night in terms of what the refs explained to him when it came to officiating Giannis

I mean….that is objectively not good! Call me crazy, but that feels like the exact OPPOSITE of how NBA refs should be operating when it comes to doing their jobs. A foul is a foul. Whether that's a clear trip on Jaylen or Giannis getting mauled. 

So while I'm sure there will be some out there that think this is just Jaylen being salty over a blown call and a loss that should have never happened, I think two things can be true at once. I think he can be rightfully pissed about what took place at the end of the UTA game, but also leading the front to calling out this bullshit and the NBA's VERY APPARENT officiating problem. We all see it as fans, so it's about time players and coaches started to speak up about it. 

Will it change anything? Probably not. But at a time when "integrity of the game" is such an area of focus for Adam Silver and the NBA, how can he continue to allow stuff like this to happen with no accountability? The only thing that's going to happen from this stuff is that both Jaylen and Doc will be fined. That's it. How do we know the refs are on the level when this stuff happens? How do we know with the Jazz being +10 heading into the game that there wasn't any fishy business going on? How do we know no one is wagering on Giannis' FTA? Chances are that stuff isn't happening, but with all the gambling shit going on already, the fact that your brain can even go to that place is the problem. 

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The NBA's officiating problem is certainly nothing new, we've been dealing with this pretty much every night across the league. Good teams, bad teams, superstars, regular role players, nobody is safe, and we're at the point where this problem is legitimately impacting the results of games. How the NBA league office can just sit back and do nothing about it is bonkers to me, so maybe this is the thing that will potentially lead to some change or at the very least, some sort of accountability when stuff like this happens.

Because if not, things are most definitely not going to get better. They're obviously going to continue to get worse.