Jaylen Brown has managed to get fined despite his season being over.
The NBA announced on Tuesday that they are fining the Boston Celtics star Brown a sum of $50,000. In the league’s release, they said Brown issued a “public criticism of the officiating” during “a livestream on May 3.”
Brown and the Celtics just lost their first-round playoff series to the Philadelphia 76ers over the weekend. In the wake of the loss, Brown slammed 76ers star Joel Embiid for flopping.
During a livestream on Twitch, Brown said that “flopping has ruined our game” and hinted the referees were letting Embiid get away with constant flops. Brown also later went on to say that the referees had “an agenda” against him (see the full video of his remarks here).
For context, the former NBA MVP Embiid missed the first three games of the Celtics series as he recovered from an emergency appendectomy. But Embiid played in the final four games, averaging 25.2 points on 9.2 total free throw attempts per game to help the 76ers rally from a 3-1 deficit to win the series.
As for Brown, he had a breakout year as the No. 1 option for the Celtics and averaged 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 5.1 assists per game during the regular season. But Brown was upset with the officiating for most of the year and already got fined by the league a few months ago after a similar rant. Now Brown is getting fined again at two times the standard NBA fine of $25,000 for public officiating criticisms (likely with his status as a repeat offender factored in).
