Jaylen Brown: Celtics victim to refs’ ‘home cooking’ in Game 2 loss

The Boston Celtics were not happy with the officiating during Game 2 of the NBA Finals on Sunday night.

After the Warriors evened the best-of-seven series at one game apiece with a dominant 107-88 victory in front of a roaring Chase Center crowd, Celtics star Jaylen Brown told reporters it felt like there was some favoritism for the home team by referees.

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Brown and Celtics coach Ime Udoka thought Draymond Green should have received a technical foul near the end of the first half for his actions during a scuffle with the Boston guard. Green committed a personal foul on Brown and the pair became entangled, but officials didn’t take further action upon reviewing the play.

It would have been Green’s second technical of the game, thus leading to an ejection, and Udoka told reporters that the tech he himself received at the beginning of the third quarter was “on purpose” for letting the referees know how he felt “in a demonstrative way.”

In Brown’s opinion, home-court advantage played out in more ways than one on Sunday. Even though their coach went out on a limb with his intentional technical, he maintained that the Celtics try not to interfere with the game’s officiating.

“We try not to get too much involved with the officiating,” Brown told reporters after the game. “We just want to come out and play basketball and let that decide where it goes. But obviously on [the Warriors’] home floor, so some home cooking.”

Brown added that he thinks the referees gave Golden State plenty of leeway when it came to the contest’s physicality.

“We’ve just got to come out and raise our level of intensity,” he said. “[The Warriors] raised theirs, and we kind of were looking around expecting for somebody to kind of bail us out, and on their home floor that’s not going to happen. We’ve got to raise ours and really no excuses about it. We’ve just got to be better.”

Brown got off to a fiery start in Game 2, scoring 12 points on 4-of-6 shooting in the first eight minutes. A foul on Gary Payton II was his second of the first quarter, however, and forced him to the bench — another qualm Brown took up with the media after the game.

“Yeah, I was just being aggressive to start the game, feeling great,” Brown said. “I got a call, I guess in the first half, that put me on the sideline. I don’t feel like I touched Gary Payton, and I expressed that, but they called the foul on me. That sat me down.

“Can’t let that be the reason why in the second half I wasn’t able to be as effective, but definitely changed the game with that phantom call.”

As for his exchange with Green, during which he claimed the Warriors forward tried to pull down his pants, Brown said he didn’t let that — or any of Green’s antics — get in his head.

“… It’s the NBA Finals,” he said after the game. “You come to play basketball. I know what Draymond is going to do. I know what he’s going to try to do. They switched the lineup. They tried to put him on me, be physical, muck the game up, pull me, grab me and overall raise the intensity. I feel like they got away with a lot of stuff tonight, but I’m looking forward to the challenge of the next game.

“All that stuff, the gimmicks, the tricks, we’ve just got to be the smarter team, be the more physical team. Look forward to just coming out and playing Celtic basketball.”

As the Warriors and Celtics head back to Boston for Game 3 on Wednesday at TD Garden, Brown and his teammates are certainly hoping for “some home cooking” of their own.

But with the way Golden State played on Sunday night, Boston might need much more than that to reclaim their Finals lead.