BY PROTECTING GREEN, NBA TAINTS FINALS WITH INTEGRITY BREACH

The badboy should have been ejected after his mugging of Jaylen Brown, and the non-call suggests the league was more interested in extending a series — and helping the Warriors — than applying justice

     The referee’s name is Zach Zarba. His favorite movie, according to his bio, is “The Godfather.” It figures, too, because when he ignored Draymond Green’s mugging of Jaylen Brown while watching a few feet away, Zarba assured the Golden State Warriors of a mob-fix-style victory in Game 2 of the NBA Finals.

     This is not a perception issue, the traditionally polite way of calling out the league when officiating shenanigans swallow a Finals game. No, this is an integrity breach, all in the name of protecting Green from an entirely deserved ejection late in the second quarter Sunday night. How are we supposed to take the NBA seriously when it lapses into a WWE moment, tinkering with the potential outcome of its championship showcase, using the officiating variable to extend a hot-buzz series as long as possible?

     All of which, of course, is good for the league, good for TV ratings, good for social media, good for advertisers — good for business. Never mind that it’s bad for the Boston Celtics.

     Without their so-called inspirational leader in the second half — I view Green as a designated goon and wind-up toy — the Warriors might not have turned a close game into a romp and tied the series. But Zarba disregarded all four intervals where Green deserved a technical foul, his second of the game and fifth of the postseason. An ejection would have left him only two technicals shy of an automatic one-game suspension later in the Finals, and I don’t need to remind anyone what happened when his antics landed him in the sin bin for Game 5 of the 2016 Finals, ultimately costing the Warriors a string of four straight titles and giving LeBron James his win-one-for-Cleveland glory. The selective ignorance by Zarba and his crew, which reviewed the sequence on tape, is even more disgraceful when you replay the incident later and realize the Celtics were jobbed.

     At the time of the crime, they still were positioned to win and take firm control of the series. Boston trailed only 50-48, with under a minute left in the half, when Brown launched a three-pointer. His feet were landing when Green twirled around and intentionally plowed into him, ass first, and they tumbled in a heap to the hardwood. Green placed his legs atop Brown and grabbed him with both arms, then shoved him. Zarba just stood there and watched as Brown, understandably incensed, pulled himself off the floor and stood over Green, who reached up and yanked Brown’s shorts. There might have been a globally televised wardrobe malfunction without the intervention of Brown’s teammate, Marcus Smart, who restrained Green as Jayson Tatum and Zarba — well, hello there, Mr. Referee — were separating Brown from the fray before matters could escalate by the courtside seats at Chase Center.

     “In the normal course of a game, this would be a double T,’’ Jeff Van Gundy commented on the ABC broadcast. Translated beyond his tip-toeing, he said what many of us were thinking: What is called by an official during the regular season isn’t necessarily called in the Finals, a subtle acknowledgment of financial/league/network considerations while still being able to keep his analyst gig.

     Ime Udoka, the first-year Celtics coach, also referenced the specter of funny business and the ramifications of a Green ejection. “I was not surprised … due to the circumstances,” he said of the non-call, which at the least should have been an assessment of double technicals on both players.

     Brown took it a step further after the 107-88 loss, saying Green should have been teed-up for an unsportsmanlike play. “I’m just trying to play basketball. I feel like that was an illegal play. I feel like they could have called it, but they let it go in terms of a technical,” he said. “But I don’t know what I was supposed to do there. Somebody got their legs on the top of your head and then he tried to pull my pants down. I don’t know what that was about.”

     Oh, he knows. We all know what Draymond Green is about. For those old enough to remember, or isolated enough during the pandemic’s early stage to watch “The Last Dance” docuseries, Dennis Rodman was the original provocateur during the Chicago Bulls dynasty. Steve Kerr, who happens to coach the Warriors, was Rodman’s teammate on those teams. He surely remembers the occasions when Rodman yanked on opponents’ shorts. The difference being: Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Phil Jackson never let Rodman cost them a championship. Green already has done so.

     Might he sabotage the Warriors again?

     If the Celtics are smart, their constant mission moving forward will be to bait him into more technicals, if not flagrant fouls. Green is particularly vulnerable to costly episodes when the attention is on him, as it is now, as exacerbated by his post-game podcasts and flammable comments. Will he crack amid the notorious insults of rude, crude New Englanders inside TD Garden? The fans who prompted Kyrie Irving to flip them off with middle fingers? As it is, Green already has impacted the series by predicting the Celtics would beat Miami in the Eastern Conference finals, which could be construed as preferring to play Boston. After his terrible performance in a Game 1 fourth-quarter collapse, Green mocked the idea of the Celtics repeating their deadly three-point shooting. Now that the villain has rebounded with a victory, he’s back to being stealth-mouthy, saying he didn’t deserve a technical even if his reputation preceded him.

     “It’s the NBA Finals. Like I said, I wear my badge of honor,” Green said afterward on ESPN. “It’s not that I’m saying they necessarily treat me different. I’ve earned differential treatment. I enjoy that. I embrace that.”

     He’ll continue to push the envelope as long as the officials see nothing and say nothing. Zarba and Co. weren’t fazed when Green, just after the opening tip, dove to the floor football-style and wrestled Al Horford for the ball. Nor did they react when he shoved Grant Williams away. They let Draymond be Draymond, which might be cool inside the Octagon but isn’t good for basketball. “We can’t fall behind 2-0,” Green explained. “I know that falls on me, the physicality. I wanted to make sure that’s the intensity, the physical level we need to be at to win in the NBA Finals. Just wanted to lead by example and give the guys something to follow.”

     Roughing up Jaylen Brown is leading by example? And the league office is OK with it? Green’s revisionist short-term history was fascinating. “I’m never gonna let someone stand over me,’’ he said, forgetting the events that led to Brown’s objection. “I’m a man first. My kids are in the stands. I don’t play those type of games. Whatever happens at that point, happens.”

     Then, in the interview room, he took a shot at the Celtics. “They are who we thought they were,” Green said. “We put ourselves right back in position to take control of the series. Now we haven't taken control of it yet. But we have put ourselves in position to go and take control of it.”

     Thanks to the crew chief who enabled him.

     “They got away with a lot of stuff,” Brown said. “That’s what Draymond Green does. He’ll pull you, he’ll grab you, he’ll try to muck up the game because that’s what he does. It’s nothing to be surprised about.

     “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. Looking forward to the challenge.”

     Apparently, that challenge includes opposition in the NBA office. Who knew the league would protect Draymond Green from himself? Remember this integrity breach if the Warriors win a tainted championship. Hell, they can invite Zach Zarba to the parade.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.