{"id":407630,"date":"2026-01-14T23:51:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T23:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/407630\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T23:51:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T23:51:08","slug":"jaylen-brown-celtics-deserve-more-respect-from-nba-refs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/407630\/","title":{"rendered":"Jaylen Brown: Celtics deserve more respect from NBA refs"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIAMI \u2014 Jaylen Brown did not seem surprised about the fine he received from the NBA earlier this week. After all, he did tell the league to fine him during a rant about the officiating.<\/p>\n

\u201cAsk, and you shall receive,\u201d Brown quipped Wednesday afternoon after the Boston Celtics wrapped up practice at the University of Miami.<\/p>\n

Despite that moment of humor, Brown quickly turned serious again while continuing to fight for more love from NBA referees. He explained more about why he spoke up again after Saturday\u2019s loss to the San Antonio Spurs and why he has grown frustrated with the officiating this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think something had to be said,\u201d Brown said. \u201cAs a team, we get to the free-throw line the least in the league. So just protecting our guys and myself. I think that we deserve a little bit of more respect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown was fined $35,000<\/a> for publicly criticizing the officiating in the Celtics\u2019 game against San Antonio. Though it was his first fine of the season, he had previously complained about the referees after several other games. He said he hopes his latest comments will convince the NBA to look at the way the Celtics have been officiated this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the analytics show that our team is dead last (in free-throw attempts),\u201d Brown said. \u201cAnd it feels like inconsistencies as well. So I want them to \u2014 hopefully they put some time in and review it. But I feel like defenders and stuff are getting away with a lot, and it makes my job a lot harder.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Brown said, the Celtics rank last in free-throw attempts with 18.7 per game. They are the only team to get to the line fewer than 20 times per game. Individually, Brown ranks 15th in free-throw attempts per game at 7.2 despite driving more times than anyone outside of Deni Avdija or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Each of those players ranks among the top four in free-throw attempts per game.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us to be last, I just think we need a little bit more respect,\u201d Brown said. \u201cWe come out and compete; we\u2019re one of the top teams in the league. It\u2019s not like we\u2019re not coming out and competing on both ends of the ball, on defense and offense. It\u2019s hard to beat good teams if you\u2019re only getting to the free-throw line four times when you play against top-tier teams. Like, no matter what the X\u2019s and O\u2019s are, no matter what, if that part of the game isn\u2019t substantial and it\u2019s constantly that it\u2019s hard to win those games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown said he has studied officiating, so he knows where refs are supposed to be and who\u2019s supposed to make each call. He said he has also studied all the players who get to the free-throw line the most. It bothers him that he feels like he doesn\u2019t get the same whistle as those guys.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do the same things that they do,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThey just pick and choose who they like to call it on. That\u2019s the part that pisses me off. It should just be everybody should just get reffed evenly and consistently, but it just seems like there\u2019s an agenda where some guys they choose to call certain fouls for, some guys they don\u2019t. So I don\u2019t know what goes into that decision-making, but it\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the Celtics, Brown wasn\u2019t alone in speaking out about the officials recently. In an unusual news conference after the team\u2019s 98-96 loss to the Indiana Pacers on Monday night, coach Joe Mazzulla said nothing but \u201cillegal screen\u201d<\/a> while responding to questions. He repeated the phrase six times, making it clear he believed Pascal Siakam should have been called for an offensive foul before his game-winning floater with 6.1 seconds left.<\/p>\n

Though the NBA acknowledged in its last two-minute report that Mazzulla was right and an illegal screen should have been called, he said he didn\u2019t focus on the no-call with the Celtics players. Instead, he harped on the third-quarter run that allowed Indiana to build a lead earlier in the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a balance, because at the end of the day, it\u2019s out of your control and there\u2019s really nothing you can do about it, but from time to time, there\u2019s always moments where \u2014 I thought that was an obvious one,\u201d Mazzulla said. \u201cSo it\u2019s just a balance there. At the end of the day, that\u2019s not the message to our team. The message to the team was that run they went on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Added Mazzulla, \u201cWe can\u2019t put ourselves in a situation where other people are allowed to control the outcome of the game. So we have to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown wants the officials to do better, too. After missing Monday\u2019s loss to Indiana with low back spasms, he was on the practice court Wednesday and said he felt good.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven without (more free-throw attempts), we\u2019re a good team, so we beat a lot of teams,\u201d Brown said. \u201cIt\u2019s just harder to beat the better teams when you\u2019re not getting that. But we\u2019re a good enough team that if we just play through it, we\u2019ll beat 50 percent of the teams that are out there just because we play better basketball, we\u2019re in the right place, we\u2019re smarter. But when you play really good teams, that makes it tough.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo as a leader, it\u2019s my job to kind of not let it affect us so we\u2019re not complaining too much and stuff like that. But when you make physical drives, and you get to the basket, and they don\u2019t call it, it makes it look like a bad possession, and then it leads to our defense, it just points over. So then it makes me think. Should I be aggressive here? Should I pass it here? You start getting indecisive, and it just snowballs. But I\u2019m going to keep being aggressive, but I also have to monitor if I don\u2019t get it, just have a stoic mentality, and on to the next play.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2014 Jaylen Brown did not seem surprised about the fine he received from the NBA earlier this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[2242,355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-407630","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-boston-celtics","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}