The Moment
In case you somehow missed the clip flying around your group chats: Houston Rockets center Alperen Sengun, 23, was ejected after repeatedly calling rookie referee Jenna Reneau a b**** during a game this week. Enhanced audio from the broadcast picked up the slur not once, not twice, but three separate times as he argued a no-call late in the fourth quarter against the Boston Celtics.
According to widely shared game footage on X, Sengun first complained about contact on his drive, then turned and appeared to say, “you a b****” while jogging away. As he was tossed, he doubled down with “f***ing b****,” and then reportedly said it a third time after Reneau told one of his teammates, “he can’t call me that.”
He was immediately ejected and sent to the locker room. No additional league discipline has been announced yet, but the moment went viral in under an hour. Not ideal timing for the Rockets, who had just posted a feel-good social tribute for National Girls and Women in Sports Day the very same day.
Two nights later, after the Rockets beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 112-106 on the road, Sengun finally addressed it. Speaking to reporters postgame, he called his behavior “immature,” said it was “in the moment,” and claimed he went to the locker room to apologize to Reneau, shook her hand, and promised it would never happen again.
The Take
I’m all for heat-of-the-moment emotion in sports. Yelling about a missed foul? Fine. Dropping a casual misogynistic slur at a woman just doing her job – and doing it three times for emphasis? That is not just “immature,” that is a whole worldview leaking out.
We love to pretend these blowups are isolated lapses, like a one-off typo in an otherwise perfect email. But language like that is more like your browser history: it shows what’s been open in the background for a while.
To Sengun’s credit, he did apologize quickly and publicly. He said he felt bad, admitted he should have known better, and described shaking Reneau’s hand in the locker room. That is baseline accountability, and it matters. Especially for a 23-year-old still figuring out who he is on a very big stage.
But the apology doesn’t erase what he said, or why it hit so hard. Female referees are still a small minority in the NBA. They work twice as hard to be seen as neutral, competent, and in control – and then one frustrated player reduces a professional woman to a four-letter word in front of millions. It lands differently than the usual “you’re blind” ref rant.
What makes this extra tone-deaf is the backdrop: the same organization publicly celebrating women in sports while one of its stars is caught tearing a woman down on the floor. It’s like posting a Women’s History Month quote on Facebook and then talking over every woman in the meeting. Technically, those two things can coexist. They just shouldn’t.
The fix here isn’t just a private handshake and a “my bad.” It’s the league and the team making it painfully clear that sexist language is not just another “competitive moment” – it’s a line. Tossing him from the game did send a message, especially with Reneau standing up for herself in real time. But if there’s no further consequence, the message becomes: say the quiet part loud, apologize, move on.
Fans see this, especially younger boys watching. If the worst that happens is you get ejected and then shrug it off as a heat-of-the-moment slip, the behavior starts to look more like a script than a mistake.
Receipts
Here’s what we actually know, separated from the noise:
- Confirmed: Sengun was ejected in the fourth quarter of the Rockets’ loss to the Boston Celtics after repeatedly directing the word “b****” at referee Jenna Reneau, as heard on broadcast audio and slowed-down video shared on X on February 6, 2026.
- Confirmed: In postgame comments on February 8, 2026, after a win over the Oklahoma City Thunder, Sengun called his actions “immature,” said he “felt bad about it,” and described going to the locker room to apologize, shaking Reneau’s hand, and promising it would not happen again.
- Confirmed: Reneau can be heard on the viral clip saying, “He can’t call me that,” before Sengun is ejected.
- Confirmed: As of the night of February 8, 2026, there was no public announcement of a fine or suspension beyond the in-game ejection, based on league reporting and game recaps from multiple sports outlets.
- Confirmed: The Rockets’ official social media accounts highlighted National Girls and Women in Sports Day with a video segment earlier that same day, featuring players praising women’s basketball and its influence.
- Unverified: Any private conversations between Reneau, the league office, and the Rockets beyond what Sengun and broadcast audio have already revealed have not been made public.
Backstory (For Casual Readers)
If you’re not living on League Pass, here’s the quick download. Alperen Sengun is a young center for the Houston Rockets, originally from Turkey, who has been rising fast as a skilled scorer and passer. The Rockets themselves are a rebuilding franchise trying to move from drama years into something more stable and competitive.
The NBA has slowly been adding more women to its officiating ranks over the last couple of decades. Female refs are still outnumbered, but they’re increasingly visible on high-profile games. Every time one of them works a national TV matchup, she’s not only dealing with players and coaches – she’s carrying a whole conversation about whether women “belong” in that space at all.
So when a player targets a woman referee with a gendered insult, it rings differently than the usual ref-versus-player dustup. It touches on a long history of fans and commentators questioning women’s authority, especially in men’s sports. That’s why this incident traveled beyond hardcore NBA circles into mainstream conversation so quickly.
What’s Next
The next move is technically the league’s. The NBA can review in-game incidents after the fact and decide on fines, suspensions, or mandatory counseling. Whether they treat this as just another profanity-laced tirade or something more serious will say a lot about where they really stand on respect for female officials.
For Sengun, the smartest play now would be to go beyond the bare-minimum “I was emotional” script. That could mean a more detailed public statement, owning that the word he used was sexist, not just “bad language,” and maybe even some visible support for women in the game that doesn’t feel like a PR bandage slapped over a black eye.
The Rockets, meanwhile, have a chance to line up their messaging with their marketing. If you’re going to celebrate women in sports on your feeds, you have to be just as loud when someone on your own roster crosses the line with a woman in the building.
And for the rest of us watching from the couch: these moments are a reminder that progress is fragile. One outburst doesn’t erase the strides women have made in pro sports, but it does show how fast old habits pop back up under pressure.
So here’s the real test: six months from now, will this be remembered as a turning point that tightened the standard for how players talk to women on the floor, or just another clip in the never-ending highlight reel of bad behavior and quick apologies?
What do you think – does Sengun’s apology feel like genuine growth, or should the league and team be doing more to show that this kind of language toward female refs is simply non-negotiable?
Sources: Viral game footage and audio shared on X by spectator and highlight accounts on February 6, 2026; postgame media availability with Alperen Sengun on February 8, 2026; publicly available game recaps and statistical summaries from major sports news organizations dated February 5-8, 2026; the Houston franchise’s official social media posts for National Girls and Women in Sports Day in early February 2026.
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