NBA FLAGRANTLY PROTECTING WEMBY? Apparently Shoving Jalen Brunson Is Just "French Customer Service"

The NBA has officially entered the Twilight Zone.

Apparently, if you're Victor Wembanyama, you can shove Jalen Brunson to the floor during the NBA Finals and the league will look at it, review it, watch it from 47 different camera angles, zoom in, slow it down, enhance it like they're on CSI, and somehow come to the conclusion that absolutely nothing happened.

Makes perfect sense.

In Game 3 of the NBA Finals, Wembanyama turned around and planted both hands into Brunson's upper body, sending the Knicks star crashing to the hardwood. No foul was called during the game, which was ridiculous enough. But then came the real comedy act: The NBA reviewed the play and decided not to upgrade it to a flagrant foul.

Wait...what? Did we all watch the same replay? Because last time I checked, the NBA rulebook says a Flagrant 1 foul is unnecessary contact committed against an opponent. Not excessive. Not attempted murder. Not body-slamming somebody through the scorer's table. Just unnecessary contact.

Wemby wasn't making a basketball play. He wasn't going for the ball. He wasn't trying to block a shot. He wasn't fighting through a screen. He got annoyed and shoved Brunson to the floor. That's a Flagrant 1. Period. End of discussion.

Even NBA Senior Vice President of Referee Development Monty McCutchen admitted a foul should have been called.

Translation: "Yeah, we missed it."

But somehow the league still said it wasn't flagrant.

So let me get this straight. It was a foul, it shouldn't have happened, the officials missed it, the NBA admits it was missed, yet it's still not a flagrant?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you NBA Logic. The same people who can review whether somebody's pinky finger grazed a jersey in the final two minutes suddenly become blind when Wembanyama lowers the shoulder and sends Brunson flying.

And here's where Knicks fans are going to lose their minds: Wembanyama currently sits at two flagrant points this postseason. Four flagrant points equals an automatic suspension. You know what the NBA absolutely does not want? Their 7-foot-4 alien, future face-of-the-league marketing machine sitting out of a Finals game.

The NBA has spent years telling us Wemby is basketball's next superhero. Every commercial. Every billboard. Every social media post. Every broadcast. Victor Wembanyama this. Victor Wembanyama that. He's the future. He's the chosen one. He's basketball's next great global icon. So forgive me if I'm not buying the league's explanation when a play that checks every Flagrant 1 box magically becomes invisible.

If Brunson had done that to Wemby? Oh please. The replay center would've reacted like somebody robbed Fort Knox. There would've been sirens, emergency meetings, three-hour specials on NBA TV, a documentary narrated by Morgan Freeman, but because it's Wemby? Move along folks because there's nothing to see here.

Look, this isn't about hating Victor Wembanyama. The guy is an unbelievable talent. He's incredible. He's going to be great for a long time. But great players don't get special rulebooks. Instead, the rules are supposed to apply to everybody.

If that's not a Flagrant 1, then somebody in the NBA offices needs to explain what exactly a Flagrant 1 is because every fan watching saw the same thing. Every Knicks fan saw it. Every Spurs fan saw it. Every basketball fan saw it. The only people who apparently didn't see it are the people making the decision.

And that's the funniest part of all? The NBA wants us to believe our eyes are wrong. But we all know that it was a Flagrant 1 Monday night. It's a Flagrant 1 Tuesday morning. It's a Flagrant 1 next week. And no amount of NBA spin is changing that.

In short, the league missed this one: Flagrantly.