Jaylen Brown’s Frustration with Officials Reaching Boiling Point

Official Suyash Mehta ejected Jaylen Brown from Tuesday’s 125-116 Spurs win over the Celtics after crew chief Tyler Ford initially gave Brown a technical foul for his reaction to a missed call against Stephon Castle. Brown, a regular critic of the officiating he’s received this season, sounded off almost immediately in the locker room.

The Celtics led 51-49 late in the second quarter at the time of the ejection before the Spurs tied the game shortly after, which held until halftime. San Antonio won close third and fourth quarters, 39-32 and 28-26, after Boston rallied in the final minutes around a strong Jayson Tatum scoring performance in Brown’s place. The Celtics lost the non-Brown minutes by eight points as he finished +1 with eight points on 4-for-8 shooting.

Joe Mazzulla criticized Ford’s unwillingness to make the ejection himself following the game, talking around the situation with a school principal/hall monitor analogy. Derrick White called the ejection bulls*** while speaking to reporters after the game. Jaylen Brown did not speak after, while Ford defended the technicals in a pool report with ESPN.

While plenty of blame goes around for the situation, officials for the blown call, Brown for putting himself in position to receive a technical foul by circling back to Ford, Celtics teammates for not separating him following the first one and Mazzulla for not challenging a strong approximate foul opportunity — the situation resurfaced an ongoing feud between Brown and the league’s officiating staff. In January, Brown sounded off about his treatment in the previous Celtics-Spurs game before Mazzulla answered every post-game question following the loss to the Pacers with illegal screen. The NBA later admitted it missed a moving screen by Pascal Siakam before his game-winning shot to end the game.

Brown and Mazzulla addressed their officiating gripes at the following practice in Miami, the latter scaling back his criticism and refocusing the Celtics on what they needed to do better following the loss. Brown, who asked to be fined following the Spurs loss and sat out the ensuing game in Indiana, ultimately received a $35,000 fine for calling Curtis Blair’s crew terrible, alleging inconsistent treatment and a bad whistle for Boston against the league’s best teams.

“I think they’re a good defensive team, but they ain’t that damn good,” Brown said. “I hope somebody can just pull up the clips, because it’s the same (expletive) every time we play a good team. It’s like they refuse to make a call then call touch fouls on the other end.”

The Celtics shot only four free throws in that loss to San Antonio’s 20, tying the Hawks and Warriors for second-fewest in an NBA game this season. Golden State attempted two in a February loss to Philadelphia. Overall, Boston fouled 18 times to San Antonio’s 13. On Tuesday, prior to Brown’s ejection, officials called seven fouls on the Celtics and five on the Spurs, awarding San Antonio eight free throws to Boston’s two. The Spurs had went to the line three times in a row since Derrick White’s lone first quarter attempts before Brown’s ejection.

Boston’s play style makes assessing the team’s treatment by officials challenging. The Celtics attempt the fewest free throws in the league per game (18.2) and receive 1.2 fewer than the 29th-place Bucks. Boston also finished last in 2025, 26th during their championship season and 28th in 2023, making that figure a clear reflection of a stylistic choice under Mazzulla. The Celtics attempt the fewest shots per game inside five feet (21.3), with the bottom five teams all ranking in the bottom-10 of free throw attempts, aside from the Lakers, who rank third. They rank first in three-pointers above the break and third in mid-rangers, accounting for 60% of their shot attempts. Only the Blazers rank outside the bottom-10 in free throws among the top-five teams in attempts above the break.

“Something had to be said,” Brown said in January. “As a team, we get to the free throw line the least in the league, so just protecting our guys and myself. I think we deserve a little bit more respect. I think the analytics show that our team is dead last and it’s inconsistencies as well. So I want them to hopefully put some time in and review it, but I feel defenders are getting away with a lot and it makes my job a lot harder.”

Brown held a legitimate gripe early in this season, when officials missed a clear foul by Keyonte George against him on a decisive Brown turnover that swung a Celtics loss to the Jazz in November. Through the end of that month, Brown ranked 24th in free throws per game despite recording the sixth-most drives in the league to that point. While Deni Avdija, Shai Gileous-Alexander and Zion Williamson received top-10 free throw totals per night playing similar styles, Jalen Brunson and Josh Giddey received relatively fewer as similar drivers.

Brown’s fortunes changed after expressing similar frustration with officiating earlier this season, receiving 16 free throw attempts against the Cavaliers to set his season high after only drawing four in a loss to the Timberwolves the previous night. Since, he ranks tied for ninth in free throw attempts per game (7.3) and earns nearly as many (3.1) on his drives as Avdija (3.7), the league leader in free throw attempts. That lends some credit toward Brown for being the team’s vocal advocate when it comes to officiating, but also pulls from the notion that the league’s referees share a personal gripe against him. He had previously quipped this year that they were sending a message to him, and that he’d be quiet. Brown said he’s had conversations with the league’s officiating staff.

“I’ve studied officiating,” Brown told CLNS earlier this season. “I’ve taken the next step to know where refs are supposed to be, whose call it’s supposed to be, who’s at the point of attack, who’s in the high quadrant or whatever. I’ve learned the officiating, so I know who to talk to, who missed the call and on top of that, I’ve studied all the top guys who get to the free throw line at a high rate and do the same things that they do. They just pick and choose who they like to call it on. That’s the part that pisses me off, because it should just be everybody gets reffed evenly and consistently, but it seems like there’s an agenda where some guys they choose to call certain fouls on and some guys they don’t. So I don’t know what goes into that decision-making, but it’s kind of clear that certain guys on certain teams, certain markets or certain profiles get preferential treatment versus others when it should just be basketball.”