Jaylen Brown was on a roll. He’d scored 11 of his team-high 36 points in the fourth quarter for the Celtics on Monday night, doing the heavy lifting in erasing a double-digit deficit to the visiting Jazz. With Boston up by one after a Derrick White technical free throw, Brown had the ball and a chance to plunge a dagger into Utah’s hearts in the final minute.
That, um, is not how things turned out.
After taking a ball screen from White to draw a favorable matchup against Keyonte George, Brown prepared to attack in isolation from the middle of the floor with five seconds remaining on the shot clock. As George stepped out to defend, the Jazz guard slipped, fell and took a seat on the hardwood, his legs splayed out in front of him. Brown, dribbling to his right, tripped over George’s legs, falling to the ground himself and losing control of the ball.
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Brown, and presumably every other person inside TD Garden, expected a whistle — a tripping foul on George, a trip to the line for Brown, a chance to extend the Celtics with a pair of free throws.
There was no whistle.
Instead, play continued. Quick-thinking Jazz rookie Walter Clayton Jr. scooped up the loose ball, attacking in transition and lofting a lob for an alley-oop finish by forward Lauri Markkanen, giving the Jazz a 103-102 lead with 44.4 seconds remaining — and leaving Brown incensed.
The Celtics still had a chance to come out on top, with center Neemias Queta drawing a foul against Utah big man Jusuf Nurkić and heading to the line for two free throws with 24.8 seconds to go. Queta split the pair, though, knotting the score at 103 and giving the Jazz one last look … which, thanks to Nurkić, turned into two:
Nurkić’s offensive rebound and putback put Utah back in front with 0.6 seconds left on the game clock — enough time for Boston to attempt one final catch-and-shoot look. The C’s never got that shot off, though: Brown was called for an offensive foul for pushing off on Jazz defender Taylor Hendricks, scuttling Boston’s last gasp and giving Utah a 105-103 win.
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After the loss, a frustrated Brown offered his perspective on the late-game no-call:
“Man, y’all going to get fined,” he told reporters. “Because you can’t have a mistake like that, as an official, at that point in the game. It’s fourth quarter. It’s a minute left in the game, or less. And you completely — the whole staff blows the f***ing call, you know what I mean? It cost us the game. Unacceptable.
“You can make mistakes at any point in the game, but right there? That wasn’t good. It’s unacceptable. And then they’re telling me, like, ‘Aw, we didn’t see it.’ Like, how did none of you see it? You can’t trip somebody in the fourth quarter and then just be a no-call. It’s some bulls***.”
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After the game, pool reporter Adam Himmelsbach of the Boston Globe asked officiating crew chief Kevin Scott for clarification about how the referees saw that tell-tale play, and why George wasn’t called for a foul:
With about 47 seconds left in the fourth quarter, Keyonte George fell in front of Jaylen Brown, who was driving toward the basket. Brown then fell over George, but no foul was called. What was your view of this play, and why was no foul called on George?
SCOTT: During live play the crew observed George slip and fall just prior to Brown slipping on the same spot resulting in the ball becoming loose prior to any contact.
During live play that was your view. Did you have a chance to look at it? Is that still your view of it?
SCOTT: That’s still my view after being on the floor in live play.
Why is that not a foul?
SCOTT: Because the crew observed both players slip and fall prior to any contact. That’s why a foul was not called during live play.
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Reasonable people can disagree over whether either of Brown’s feet began to go out from underneath him before he made contact with the seated George. (I would submit that the slow-mo replays I’m seeing don’t necessarily support the officials’ case, but hey, I’m working from Brooklyn, not Secaucus.) What’s not in dispute, though: The Celtics’ ongoing struggles on the defensive glass.
The game-winning putback was Nurkić’s fourth offensive rebound of the night, and Utah’s 15th as a team. Only the Hawks and Suns are giving up more offensive rebounds per game than the C’s; only those two teams plus the Pistons and 76ers are giving up more second-chance points per game; and only the winless Nets have a lower defensive rebounding rate than Joe Mazzulla’s team.
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Everybody knew controlling the interior would be an issue for Boston after bidding farewell to Kristaps Porziņģis, Al Horford and Luke Kornet in the offseason, and without Jayson Tatum in the fold to crack back from the wing and attack the boards. Compound that with a brutal shooting night — 11-for-51 from long distance, 40 missed 3-pointers — and you’ve got a recipe for a second straight loss, dropping Boston to 3-5.
“We’re never going to be top five [in rebounding],” Mazzulla told reporters after the game. “But we have to be better. It’s a combination of ones that we have to get and we have to compensate in other areas to be better at that, whether it’s our shot-making, whether it’s our turnovers, whether it’s our offensive rebounds. We just have to fight to be better at that.”
