NBA

‘The inconsistency is crazy.’ Post-scoring responses decrease?

ballervisions 2026年1月14日

Jaylen Brown obviously had enough on Saturday. Despite driving the paint 23 times against the San Antonio Spurs, the most by an NBA player that day, the former Finals MVP finished with zero free throws in a hard-fought game. The refereeing team saw that he was not fouled on any of his 23 or 28 drives. In the four-point loss, the Celtics took just four free throws the entire game, the second fewest in Celtics storied franchise history.

After the game, Brown criticized the officials for not calling fouls, knowing full well that the league would not be happy with his comments. Then he took X and doubled it. (He was immediately fined $35,000.)

“I’ll take the penalty at this point. I thought it was bulls*** tonight,” Brown said in minutes before reporters. “The inconsistency is crazy. Give me a penalty. I got my plot or whatever, but I don’t know what’s going on.”

(Grant Thomas/Yahoo Sports Illustration)

Brown couldn’t elaborate on the details of his theory, but he’s far from alone in being fed up with management this season. Brown is the latest player to be fined for making a comment or gesture to a manager — Dillon Brooks and Marcus Smart also suffered earlier this season.

Three coaches were recently fined by the league office for publicly criticizing referees within days of each other. Elsewhere, Steve Kerr had to be physically separated from chief of staff Brian Forte last week when he was ejected from a Warriors game. After Monday’s loss to the Pacers, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla mocked the officials for repeatedly responding to an “illegal screen” in an apparent attempt to draw attention to Pascal Siakam’s pancake to Derrick White in the closing seconds. (L2M’s NBA report said Siakam really should have been called for that.)

Without public comment, the big storm has been quietly brewing. Scoring has fallen across the league and has hampered his league-leading teammates. Among those trying to figure out what’s going on with management, there are sports books and the gambling community.

In January, including the Brown rant game, free throw shooting suddenly dropped across the NBA, which depressed total points and led to non-stop betting on under-point totals. Over time, sportsbooks are very good at predicting total points and often see over/under bets of around 50% on either side, as happened in October, November and December this season. But in the month of January, according to betting tracking website Odds Shark, the underdog spent an impressive 64.7% of the time, with bookmakers often underestimating the mark every night.

One longtime bettor noted the sudden change in free throws early and told Yahoo Sports he’s been tipping the underdogs: “We r printing (money) lol.”

Brown, coaches and sportsbooks are all wondering: What, if anything, is going on?

Free throws and fouls on the floor

It wasn’t long before teams were enjoying nightly shows to the free throw line. Through the opening weeks of the season in October, there were eight instances of a team shooting at least 40 free throws in a game. Compare that to just two instances of a team shooting fewer than 10 free throws. In November and December, the biggest nights of charity lines outnumbered the smaller ones.

But here in January, that ratio has gone to a head. There have already been nine single-digit free throw games in two weeks, the same number as November and December combined.

Other parts of the game remain remarkably consistent. Two-point field goal percentage is almost the same month-to-month, while 3-point field goal percentage is down slightly to 34.7% in January compared to 35.5% leading up to it. The turnover rate and 3-point frequency are also holding strong, according to tracking pbpstats.com.

[Subscribe to Yahoo Sports NBA on YouTube]

But free throws? That has been a major driver of the drop in scores. The team’s trips to the line, according to pbpstats.com data, dropped from 26.1 free throws per 100 possessions in October to 24.6 in November to 23.1 in December to 21.7 in January, marking a nearly 20% drop from October to January in free throw rate.

The result is that games see an average of eight points cleared in the month of January.

The betting community has tried to cope with the sudden drop in scores. Sportsbooks have reduced the total number of points further and are trying to find a footing. According to Odds Shark data, the lows started to break on Jan. 1 where all five games went under and went on to unexpectedly low scores. In the first 12 days in January, no single night in the schedule saw more overs than unders on the game slate. Between Jan. 5 and Jan. 7, the results were skewed in an unbalanced way; was only 20 under to six.

Then on Jan. 10, the night of the Brown rant, Vegas bookies issued a season low/under line, posted at 214.5 for the LA Clippers in the Detroit game. They include 190.

On Monday night, four of the six games were underdogs, led by another single-digit night from Boston in the free throw attempt column. Vegas set an over/under of 227.5 points on a night with a reputation for “illegal screen” from Mazzella’s news conference. Indiana and Boston combined for only 194, with neither team reaching 100 points. Indiana also finished in single-digit free throws.

The story of the night Mazzulla asked for a bad call and didn’t get it.

The parallel of 2024

It would be unheard of for the league to change the way the games were called during the season.

In early March 2024, I reported that teams were seeing a significant drop in points, largely supported by a sudden drop in free throws awarded by the officials. Were officials told to allow more physical activity? There were weeks of denials, first from Marc Stein at The Stein Line and then from the league office led by then vice president Joe Dumars and senior vice president of referee development and coaching Monty McCutchen, denying the idea in The Lowe Post on ESPN that they had secretly decided to let the players play more.

In April, the league changed its course. After the board of governors meeting, commissioner Adam Silver announced in a press conference that the league had made a “slight change in approach” to the way the game was officiated to bring more balance to the game.

“We get feedback from our teams and we measure as we go by how people view the game,” said Silver. “I think there was a sense at the beginning of the season that there was a huge advantage for the attacking players.”

Translation: The league pulled the strings to provide some benefits to the defensive backs. Which, by the way, I don’t argue is a bad decision. The league kept it a secret and didn’t tell anyone but the referees. Not groups. Not the media. And sportsbooks, as they are now, try to write accurate over/unders without complete information.

These are important things. Relatedly, the NBA recently mandated teams to file accurate injury reports every 15 minutes, which was widely seen as a way to give sportsbooks and help prevent misinformation in the wake of the bombshell gambling scandal.

Has the league office made any adjustments over time?

According to several NBA coaches and managers, the league’s memo had not been sent out to inform participants that the game was being officiated differently. But some of the team’s analytics teams tried to make sense of the new management practices they were seeing and presented data to the front office and coaching staff, according to sources who spoke to Yahoo Sports. Many insiders have expressed doubt that there is any explanation beyond a change of management like the one seen in 2024.

So what has really changed?

If players and head coaches want to be consistent, some areas of the game seem to be handled differently these days. But I have to point out that one area that has been called out consistently throughout the season is the level of poor drives. Looking at player tracking data, 7.1% of drives resulted in turnovers in January, which was exactly the same rate as in December. That’s not it.

Looking elsewhere, there are clues as to why goals have fallen recently. The biggest call that seems to be affected is scoring three goals, which according to the referee’s power, is the single most impactful shot in the game. Any time a single whistle would give a team three points instead of zero it will be considered.

It turns out that the number of fouls called three points decreased by 26% from October to January. Three-pointers Jalen Brunson, Donovan Mitchell and Keyonte George have combined for 38 three-pointers in January. Since the New Year? They have put one together. The other two holders of the triple fault, Austin Reaves and Jerami Grant, never played.

While the drop in three fouls may have led to some unhappy 3-point shooters, it probably improved the flow of the game. (There’s a reason why the G League goes with one free throw to score 1, 2 or 3 points in the first 46 minutes of a game.)

All in all, even though three-pointers have been the most notable factor in early season free throws, fouls on 2-point attempts have also dropped by nearly one per team in January. That may not seem like much, but even one wrong call means less chance of playing in the bonus, which helps keep the totals in check.

It remains to be seen whether January’s slump will hold until the end of the season. Teams, fans and sportsbooks would like some familiarity. But a return to season one free throw levels cannot be ruled out. If you ask Jaylen Brown, maybe the only consensus is inconsistency.