Get a load of this:

NBA fans would probably universally agree that Brothers and Foster are the worst refs in the league, despite having a ton of experience. Nobody gets mentioned more on social media than these two. They actually did studies on this in recent years by going through Twitter and Facebook and Reddit and found that Brothers and Foster were the top two refs mentioned on those websites. If you’re a ref you want to be dead last in this category, not first.

The thing about these two is that they seem to get every detailed call wrong. Every foul that should be a flagrant is ruled a common foul. Then you’ve got a common foul deemed flagrant. They’ll call some ticky-tack stuff and be inconsistent throughout the game. Sometimes they love the whistle and sometimes they swallow it. Brothers specifically has a habit of calling stuff that doesn’t need to be called.

It’s something to think about because Doc Rivers was really unhappy with the calls Trae Young got in Game 1. Philly admittedly got whistled for some cheap stuff, and I don’t think that’s a homer type of take. A couple of the whistles on Matisse Thybulle and Ben Simmons were egregious. The good thing is that Foster and Brothers can be equally disastrous, and maybe their erroneous nature affects Atlanta, too. We could see Joel Embiid take 40 free throws.

Keep an eye on the early minutes in this game, because if the Sixers come out with Simmons on Young and he picks up some tacky fouls, then it might be rough sledding.