NBA says a foul was missed on Victor Wembanyama’s shove of Jalen Brunson, but will not upgrade it to flagrant

The NBA acknowledged that referees missed a foul on Victor Wembanyama’s shove of Jalen Brunson during Game 3 of the NBA Finals, but the league decided against upgrading the incident to a flagrant foul. The ruling means Wembanyama’s foul total from the postseason will not increase based on that play, even though the league publicly conceded that a foul should have been called.

The play occurred in the opening quarter, when Wembanyama shoved Brunson hard with both hands as Brunson tried to set a screen. Brunson did not go fully to the floor, but he had to brace himself from the contact, which immediately drew a reaction from the crowd. Brunson got up, confronted Wembanyama briefly, and the action continued without a foul being assessed in real time.

NBA head of officiating Monty McCutchen discussed the incident on ESPN, acknowledging that officials did not handle the exchange correctly. According to reporting, McCutchen said the league’s review showed a clear foul was missed and pointed to the challenge of officials “seeing” the relevant on-ball screening action during a busy, physical stretch of play.

Even with that concession, the NBA’s review concluded that the shove would not be classified as a flagrant foul after the fact. In other words, the league treated the incident as a missed ordinary foul rather than conduct serious enough to trigger escalation to a flagrant tier. Reporting also indicated that replays appeared to show Brunson grabbing Wembanyama’s jersey before the shove, a factor that appears to have mattered in the league’s decision not to increase the penalty.

The decision carries an obvious implication for the Finals title picture, because flagrant fouls can alter game flow through free throws and potential player ejection scenarios, as well as accumulation toward automatic thresholds. In this case, the league’s determination preserves Wembanyama’s postseason flagrant-point standing as it was before the review.

USA Today reported that the ruling keeps Wembanyama at two flagrant foul points for the postseason, both from a prior Flagrant 2 ejection against Minnesota in the second round. The same reporting said that if the Game 3 shove had been upgraded to a Flagrant 1, it would have moved him to a three-point total, one short of an automatic suspension threshold.

For the Knicks and Spurs, the controversy is less about the final margin of Game 3 and more about how standards are applied in the playoffs, particularly in the NBA Finals where physicality is expected but escalation is supposed to follow clear rules. The league’s willingness to admit a missed foul, paired with its refusal to change the foul category, sets a narrow standard for when a review will reach the flagrant bar.

What to watch next is how teams adjust to the same kinds of screening-and-contact sequences, especially on-ball action where officials can miss the exact moment of infraction. With the league indicating that the review process identified an error but did not see grounds for flagrant punishment, future disputes may hinge on whether officials can point to aggravating factors that clearly cross from “missed” to “misconduct.”