Jaylen Brown Follows Up Playoff Collapse With Streamer Tantrum
Over the course of seven games, the circumstances of the first-round playoff series between the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers shifted wildly. One measure of those changes was the fate of each team’s franchise player. Sixers center Joel Embiid burst in mid-series, just 17 days after an emergency appendectomy, and soon began to dominate. Celtics wing Jayson Tatum, two months removed from his return after a speedy and successful right Achilles repair, tweaked the knee on his other leg, left Game 6 early, and missed Game 7 altogether.
Thus the Sixers had the clear talent advantage by the deciding game, in which the Celtics started three players who had never before started, and in all likelihood will never again start, a postseason game: Baylor Scheierman, Ron Harper Jr., and Luka Garza. They combined for zero points, making them the first trio of playoff starters to go scoreless since starters were first tracked in the 1970-71 season. Given this historic feat, it was a little surprising that the Celtics even managed to keep the final margin within single digits, as they lost on Saturday, 109-100.
While Boston did squander a 3-1 lead, I must concede, against my will, that it was acceptable to lose a series this competitive to a healthy and resurgent Sixers team, especially without anyone on the Celtics roster who could credibly guard Embiid. In fact, head coach Joe Mazzulla holistically overperformed in a season most observers had written off as a Tatumless gap year, instead taking them to 56 wins and the second seed. When I looked at the rosters, there wasn’t that much shame bound up in this loss, I thought to myself.
However:
My ruling on shame changed as soon as I saw that Jaylen Brown, who led the Celtics with 33 points in their losing effort, got on Twitch (first strike) less than 24 hours later to break down tape from the Game 7 loss (second strike) in order to develop a conspiracy theory about the officials (third strike) because his offensive fouls were being called correctly (OK, that’s enough). Brown believed that he was being uniquely punished for an off-arm maneuver that other NBA players, like the Sixers’ Paul George or Knicks’ Jalen Brunson, allegedly enjoy without consequences. While making this complaint, Brown wound up uttering the following sentence, which is landing solidly in the “girlfriend in Canada” or “uncle works at Nintendo” tier of truth: “I actually spoke to some refs, and they said it was an agenda going into each game, ‘Every time he brings his arms up, just reputation, just call it.'”
This would be humiliating behavior no matter the on-floor particulars, but if you want to go deeper on Brown’s habit of trucking defenders with his off-arm to make space, check out this recent tirade by analyst Nate Duncan, who has been complaining about the scourge of the off-arm for several years now, and prompted Warriors head coach Steve Kerr to deliver some great off-the-cuff analysis on the subject. The more you learn about it, the sillier Brown’s complaint will seem.
Perhaps I just miss the days when we had fewer opportunities to slam up against the banal wackness of our pro athletes and other public figures. Perhaps I’m just oldâalthough I’m not that much older than Brownâor perhaps I’m just sad about the ways that young people spend their time online. Perhaps I’ve recently watched the episode of Survivor where host Jeff Probst, a 64-year-old man who has executive-produced a successful show for over two decades, genuflected to MrBeast as if he were an emissary from a superior planet, gracing the television dipshits with his presence. But I know that tweeting out this image within a day of exiting the playoffs is not the righteous path. Jaylen Brown, you are too fast-twitch to be on Twitch. Now that you’re on vacation, you need to be fishing at the stream, not fishing for validation on a stream.
