Celtics head coach Ime Udoka met the wrath of veteran referee Tony Brothers on Monday night during a timeout. It was a bizarre, rare scene of a referee actively walking down and yelling at a coach.
Udoka explained the incident, if only briefly, after the game.
“He didn’t like how I pointed at him,” Udoka said.
Here’s how the incident went down.
With 9:30 left in the fourth quarter, Klay Thompson found himself one-on-one with Marcus Smart. It appeared Thompson pushed off, and Smart, typically, launched himself like he’d just been assaulted. The result was a no call and Thompson hit a three to put the Warriors up eight points.
A timeout was immediately called by Boston and what followed was chaos. Smart went to argue with the referees before heading back to the bench.
But after Smart’s interaction, Udoka seemed to say something that set off Brothers. Udoka was near the foul line on the Celtics’ side, Brothers near the foul line on the Warriors’ side.
Brothers, having heard something from Udoka, came storming over, openly yelling and pointing his finger aggressively at Udoka, who had already received a technical foul earlier. Eventually he walked away, but Smart received a technical foul on the ensuing possession.
You’d never know any of this from the ABC broadcast, which, inexplicably, opted to show a midday b-roll shot of the seals at Fisherman’s Wharf, as if it was a Giants Sunday afternoon matinee.
Udoka said after the game that the Celtics all complained about the officiating too much.
“I think it was a little bit of that throughout the game,” Udoka said in regards to his team interacting with officials. “So not necessarily only in the fourth. Probably something we shouldn’t do as much and we all did too much.”
Game 6 will shift back to Boston on Thursday night.