NEW YORK — Mike Brown has been pitching a perfect game for a very long time, so yes, the man deserves some space and grace. One wild pitch in the heat of the NBA Finals will not define his impeccable work as the first-year head coach of the New York Knicks.But man, what he was selling after his first defeat since April 23 — which feels like nine months ago — was ripped straight from somebody’s sore loser manual. Brown essentially blamed the second-half officiating for the end of his team’s historic 13-game postseason winning streak, and that was hardly fair to the refs working Game 3 in Madison Square Garden.Of greater consequence, it wasn’t fair to the San Antonio Spurs, who beat the Knicks 115-111 on Monday night and did not deserve to hear from Brown that the home team was screwed by the impartial arbiters of the court.Their names are Marc Davis, John Goble and Curtis Blair, though Brown didn’t identify them in his postgame news conference. But moments after he sat down at the podium, Brown made it clear the refs were more responsible for blowing the first finals game in the Garden in 27 years than some of his old reliables during this staggering run — Mikal Bridges (two points on five shots), Landry Shamet (three points on 1-of-8 shooting) and Karl-Anthony Towns (completely outplayed by Victor Wembanyama).“First of all,” Brown opened, “I want to make sure I get something clear. Coach Mitch Johnson and the Spurs, they won the game tonight. They came and took the game.”It was a good start, actually. Brown has been all about accountability and honesty with his players, his staff and his fanbase. With Donald Trump in the house as the first sitting U.S. president to attend a finals game, and with enough celebrities ringing the court to fill a dozen after-hours parties at the Oscars, the Spurs came right in and took this game from the Knicks. That is exactly what they did.“But I will say this,” Brown continued, “I never thought I would be in the NBA Finals and see a team get 24 free-throw attempts in the second half to another team’s eight.”The losing coach was suddenly heading for a cliff with this line of thought. He didn’t mention that the Knicks were awarded 14 foul shots to San Antonio’s eight in the first half, or that the final tally of free throws (32-22) didn’t represent a particularly egregious disparity, especially when the Spurs are a 62-win team with a 7-foot-4 megastar known as “The Alien.”Brown mentioned that he doesn’t complain much about officials or fairness, and that is a fact. He called San Antonio a great team, but then he went right back in on the not-so-great refs.