Jaylen Brown blasted Kevin Scott’s officiating crew in a profane postgame rant Monday night, arguing that a crucial fourth-quarter no-call “cost (the Celtics) the game.”
With 47 seconds remaining, Jazz guard Keyonte George slipped and fell in front of Brown, causing the Boston star to stumble over him and lose the ball. Lauri Markkanen scored at the other end, and Utah never trailed again in a 105-103 win at TD Garden.
Brown believed George should have been called for a foul on the play, which would have sent Brown to the free-throw line with a chance to put the Celtics ahead by three.
“Man, y’all going to get fined because you can’t have a mistake like that as an official at that point in the game,” Brown said. “It’s fourth quarter. There’s a minute left in the game or less. And you completely — the whole staff blows the (expletive) call, you know what I mean? It cost us the game. Unacceptable. You can make mistakes at any point of the game, but right there, that wasn’t good. That wasn’t good. That was unacceptable.
“And then they’re telling me like, ‘Aw, we didn’t see it.’ 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 (BS).”
This wasn’t called a trip pic.twitter.com/V9VEc6vrmT
— Danielle Hobeika (@DanielleHobeika) November 4, 2025
Scott told a pool reporter that a foul was not called because officials “observed both players slip and fall prior to any contact.”
“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,” the crew chief said.
Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla said he was not given an explanation for the no-call.
The controversial turnover marred an otherwise impressive finish by Brown, who scored eight points in the preceding two minutes to rally the Celtics back from a 12-point fourth-quarter deficit. He finished with 36 points despite missing all nine of his 3-point attempts — a team-wide problem for Boston, which went a season-worst 11-for-51 (21.6%) from deep.
The Jazz also grabbed 19 more rebounds than the Celtics, including a pivotal offensive board that set up Jusuf Nurkic’s game-winning putback with 0.6 seconds remaining. Brown was called for an offensive foul on the ensuing inbounds pass to seal the win for Utah.
“We’ve just got to play basketball,” Brown said. “I thought we had a lot of good looks. We just shot the ball poorly tonight. … We shot a lot of threes. I feel like a lot of them were good looks. A lot of threes I shot, I felt like I was wide open. The shots just didn’t go in tonight for whatever reason. We’ve still got to find ways to win. I thought, defensively, we could’ve been better. But we did enough. They had 103 points, 105 points.
“We’ve got to get the rebounds at the end of the game. They’re crucial. And then in moments, it just felt like they were the harder-playing team. I guess it’s just a part of our learning curve, I guess. Teams shouldn’t — especially a team coming off a back-to-back — shouldn’t be a harder-playing team than us. I’ve got to lead the way on both ends of the ball. So I guess I’ve got be better in that regard, as well.”
