The night after the NBA admitted Victor Wembanyama should have been called for a foul on Jalen Brunson and chose not to upgrade it to a flagrant, Mitchell Robinson gave the league a mirror image of that exact play. His forearm caught Wembanyama across the neck late in the first quarter of Game 4 at Madison Square Garden, and this time the officials didn’t hesitate: flagrant foul 1, no debate.

For ESPN’s broadcast booth, the whistle answered a question they’d been asking since Game 3. If this is a flagrant, why wasn’t that one? The psychological warfare that had defined this series turned physical in the moment, and once again, Richard Jefferson and Co. were calling out officiating inconsistency, with Wemby as the common denominator.

“By the way they’ve called flagrant fouls all season — that’s a flagrant,” Mike Breen noted during the live review. “But the Knicks are still upset that they did not upgrade Victor Wembanyama’s foul that was not called in Game 3 when he hit the back of the head of Jalen Brunson.”

While agreeing that Robinson’s hit met the flagrant criteria, Richard Jefferson questioned the NBA’s refusal to discipline Wembanyama for shoving Jalen Brunson in Game 3.

“Victor has been involved in a couple of plays. There was a Minnesota play at Naz Reid. There is a big portion of the NBA community that understood him being kicked out of the game, but the fact that there was no fine or anything else in that moment, there was a lot of discussion about it. The review of Jalen Brunson, that there wasn’t a flagrant given then. So a lot of these things are judgment calls, and this is a big play right here.”

Even Tim Legler said, “I was very surprised they did not upgrade that foul on Wembanyama the last game to a flagrant one.”

While they accepted the judgement on Robinson, it still irks them that Wemby got away with a similar action on a smaller guard.

The numbers behind the “double standard” are stark.

Wembanyama entered Game 4 with two flagrant foul points already on his postseason ledger, both from a single Flagrant 2 ejection for elbowing Minnesota’s Naz Reid in the neck during the second round, a penalty that came with an automatic minimum $2,000 fine.

The NBA later reviewed that ejection and declined to add any further suspension or fine. By contrast, the league’s review of the uncalled Brunson shove in Game 3 resulted in zero penalty points and zero fine for Wembanyama, even though NBA senior VP of referee development Monty McCutchen publicly conceded a foul should have been called in real time.

Robinson’s Flagrant 1 on Wemby in Game 4, meanwhile, adds a single point to his own postseason total. The same one-point penalty the league declined to apply to Wembanyama for the Brunson shove, despite admitting the contact occurred.

This wasn’t an isolated grievance, either.

The “physicality” complaints around Wembanyama have built across multiple series: he was seen appearing to pull Oklahoma City’s Lu Dort by the hair in Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals, and in Game 2 of these Finals, he was caught on camera tossing Knicks guard Jose Alvarado by the neck while boxing out for a rebound.

Neither of which drew supplemental discipline.

Victor Wembanyama got a long-overdue flagrant call

Jefferson has consistently called out lopsided officiating throughout the series, including the technical on Robinson for shoving Wemby in Game 2 that the league later rescinded. He expressed permanent disbelief over the leniency granted to the French superstar.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to see that replay [Game 3] and not think that should’ve been a flagrant one foul,” Jefferson declared after Robinson’s flagrant.

To him this was another incident showing the stark contrast in how the two teams are being officiated on basketball’s grandest stage.

The debated sequence unfolded right after Wembanyama scored a bucket over Robinson. As both centers jogged back to the other end, Wemby was openly taunting the Knicks big man, tapping his own temple and telling Robinson, “I’m in your head.”

The jab worked and Robinson aggressively chased Wemby past half-court and drove his forearm to the 7’4″ Alien’s neck. Even while sprawled on the floor, Wembanyama continued his psychological taunts, repeatedly pointing to his dome as his teammates hauled him up. 

While the referees reviewed it, the ESPN commentators broke down the immense psychological play in drawing an undisputed flagrant.

“This is going to be a flagrant one. Those two plays are not connected. Mitchell Robinson catches him in the jaw area. Seemed intentional,” Mike Breen said after pointing out Wemby’s mind tricks.

The crew proceeded to discuss the differences in the two debated plays. Prominently, the size differences between Wemby and Robinson tussling vs Wemby shoving a small guard like Brunson. That discussion was incomplete after the referees completed their review.

Robinson’s flagrant turned out to be only half the story. By the third quarter, Wembanyama had picked up a flagrant of his own.

The 22-year-old threw an elbow at Karl-Anthony Towns’ head in the third, similar to how he got himself ejected in the Minnesota series. There was no debating this one. It was a clear Flagrant 1.

That elbow on Towns pushed Wembanyama’s postseason flagrant total to three points, putting him one flagrant foul away from an automatic one-game suspension.

Per the NBA’s playoff discipline rules, that means a single Flagrant 1 in Game 5 would trigger a suspension for Game 6, and a Flagrant 2 at any point would do the same instantly.

Whether or not the whistle on Wembanyama actually shifted momentum, plenty of people online were ready to connect the dots.

Fox Sports’ Nick Wright captured the sentiment that spread through NBA Twitter as the Spurs’ 29-point lead evaporated, writing,

“Not sure how many folks believe in Karma or Sports Gods or whatever… But this game 10000% flipped the moment Wemby got his flagrant foul.”

It’s a tidy, if unprovable, theory, but it captures how thoroughly the officiating storyline had fused with the on-court action by the final buzzer.

Wemby is now flirting with an automatic suspension at a crucial point. The Spurs blew a 29-point lead, the largest in NBA Finals history, to lose 107-106 tonight.

If Wemby has to stretch the series, he’s going to have take more fouls than he dishes out. They’re heading back to San Antonio down 3-1 with the urgency of a new game plan – less psychological warfare, better shooting.