Jaylen Brown, Celtics lose their cool in loss to Bulls: ‘It’s been a tough week’
BOSTON — On a different day, in a different week, perhaps Jaylen Brown would have just shrugged off referee Justin Van Duyne’s remarks during the fourth quarter Thursday night. But during an emotional time in his life, after a break-in at his mother’s house in Wellesley over the weekend, Brown didn’t hold back.
Brown believed the officials made a mistake by whistling Joe Mazzulla for a technical foul because he stepped onto the court following a jump ball call with 5:12 left in the Celtics’ 117-108 loss to the Bulls. And Brown said so. Twice.
“Here’s the thing,” Brown said. “You get fined — I got fined a couple weeks ago for inadvertent gestures that were determined not a part of the game, which was fine. I took the fine. But what part of the game is the ref calling an inadvertent technical foul? And then I said to him, ‘You called a tech for no reason.’ He said, ‘If you say it to me again, I’m gonna call another tech.’ And then he called a tech. Man, get out of here. You can’t threaten guys with a technical foul. That’s not part of the game either. You want to fine people for gestures and all this stuff, fine that. This is some bulls—.”
It further bothered Brown that the exchange with Van Duyne came during such a key part of the game. At the time of the jump ball call, the Celtics trailed 99-96. The two technical free throws increased their deficit to five points. After Payton Pritchard lost the jump ball, Zach LaVine capitalized with a 3-pointer on the ensuing Chicago possession. Boston’s chances to win nearly disappeared immediately.
“We were down three at the time at the jump ball and that led to us being down eight and that affects the game,” Brown said. “That could have been avoided. Joe didn’t say anything to deserve a tech. And when I come to you and say you’re giving a tech for no reason, as a captain before the game, I come and shake all the refs’ hands because I speak for my team. I’m allowed to talk. So when I tell you you called a tech for no reason and you say, ‘If you say it again, I’m calling another tech,’ then I say it again and you call a tech, you just threatened your whistle as a threat. Like, that’s not a part of the game either.”
Boston’s problems didn’t stop with Brown’s technical foul. Jayson Tatum collected one of his own two minutes later. After LaVine’s 3-pointer pushed the margin to eight points, the Celtics never pulled any closer than six. They continued to express their frustration even after the final buzzer.
Before eventually leaving the court, Mazzulla gestured at the referees in anger and tried to approach them to share his disapproval. He was enraged enough that two assistant coaches and a security guard stepped in to direct him away from the officiating crew. It didn’t take a body language expert to realize Mazzulla wasn’t trying to deliver pleasantries, though he did joke he just wanted to wish them well.
“I just hadn’t seen them in a while, so just a Merry Christmas, happy holidays,” Mazzulla said. “I wasn’t sure I was going to see them before the holiday, and I just can’t let a moment go by to where you wish someone just the best to them and theirs and their families.”
Though Mazzulla addressed the incident with humor, the fourth quarter and the aftermath of it equaled a rare meltdown for the Celtics. They once had consistent issues with poise, but have graduated from that problem. Now, they almost always stay composed.
That’s one reason why they rolled to a championship last season, and why they’re favored to repeat. But they lost their cool Thursday. They unraveled like they hardly ever do these days. Even beyond the issues with the referees, Mazzulla said he thought the Celtics’ defensive execution waned in the second half because they didn’t make shots throughout the game. They shot 14 of 56 on 3-point attempts for their second-worst percentage of the season (25 percent).
Even with the poor shooting, the Celtics pulled within three points on a 6-0 run midway through the fourth quarter. The consecutive technical fouls killed their momentum. On its own, the initial one from Mazzulla would have been bad enough for them.
Brown could have prevented the second technical foul simply by declining to repeat his stance on the situation to Van Duyne. As much as it bothered Brown, he said Van Duyne told him exactly what would happen if he shared his opinion on Mazzulla’s technical foul a second time. Still, Brown tested the referee in a spot where the Celtics couldn’t afford to hand away another point.
“He questioned our integrity multiple times during that same sequence,” referee Tony Brothers explained in a pool report.
“It wasn’t our best moment right there,” Kristaps Porziņģis said. “We had to maintain our cool because the game was still right there (to win).”
The Celtics can normally rely on Brown, the Finals MVP, to stay collected when they need him most. If he was not himself at that moment, it was understandable. He missed practice early this week after a break-in at his mother Mechalle’s house Sunday night. She was in the Wellesley residence at the time of the crime, which occurred while the Celtics were in Washington, D.C. for a matchup with the Wizards.
“Obviously, my mother’s security is (of) the utmost importance to me, and that’s been compromised, and so it’s been a tough week,” Brown said. “We’ve had, you know, media members and reporters outside our house trying to get an inside scoop. Like, have some respect. It’s been a tough week. I’m not gonna lie.
“Thank God nothing serious or physical or threatening happened, but the fact that it could have just kind of lingers in your mind.”
The Celtics also dealt with another break-in this week. Amile Jefferson’s championship ring was reported stolen from his home in Newton. Mazzulla said nobody was at Jefferson’s house at the time of the robbery.
“They’re healthy, which is good, so they’re safe,” Mazzulla said of the Brown and Jefferson families. “It’s a scary thing, I think, for people. You see it happen around in different sports and you’re obviously aware of it, but when it happens to you, you have an understanding of the risk there. So we’re just happy that they’re safe.”
The pair of incidents within the team were still alarming. Even before they occurred, Mazzulla said the Celtics met with team security in early December about the rash of recent break-ins targeting professional athletes. The team held another meeting this week after the trend impacted the locker room.
“Whether it’s been the front office or our security team, whether it’s been local police departments, they’ve done a good job educating us on how we can get better, but the most important thing is making sure the families and the people involved are as comfortable and safe as they can be,” Mazzulla said. “And not just safe from the standpoint of their home, but psychologically as well.”
“The Celtics have provided information for us to figure it out and make sure we can do our job when we travel and stuff,” Brown said. “I know it’s been going on in different parts of the world and different parts of the U.S. where similar things have happened to athletes, etc. So hopefully, anybody who it hasn’t happened to yet, just make sure you’ve got things in place and that it doesn’t. Obviously, to go through that experience and people still in the crib and stuff like that is, it just means you think about some things differently.”
Going through all of that, it has been a heavy week for the Celtics and for Brown. It’s easy to think he might have reacted differently to the referees Thursday if he’d had less on his mind. But he is human. He is hurting.
“Jaylen has been there for his mother,” Mazzulla said before the game. “We’re trying to be there for Amile. I think the Celtics have done a great job doing what they can to educate us on how to be better, but at the same time make sure that we have a sense of security and peace amongst us. And I think that’s been key this week. The basketball stuff isn’t as important as that.”
(Photo of Jaylen Brown shooting over Patrick Williams: David Butler II / Imagn Images)
