Jaylen Brown is defending his way back into Celtics' closing five

A home win over the hapless Washington Wizards is nothing to get excited about on a Friday night in March, but it was needed desperately in the Celtics locker room on Friday night.

“A lot of weight off our shoulders,” Al Horford admitted after snapping a season-high, four-game losing streak. “Our guys just went out and just played. Just feels good to win, feels like we haven’t won in forever.”

Forever was actually just 16 days, but that actually feels like an eternity in the course of the NBA schedule. From a big picture perspective, there wasn’t a lot to be excited about in this one even in victory, as many of the same old issues persisted for Boston.

The hosts sprinted out to first-quarter lead (15 points) and proceeded to blow it up in the middle two quarters. They struggled with transition defense in the first half (allowing 21 fast break points) and 3-point shooting (10-of-38 from deep) all night, a shooting slump that has turned them into the NBA’s worst offense since the All-Star Break.

Despite these woes and a scoreless fourth quarter from Kyrie Irving (0-of-2 in six minutes) and Al Horford (zero shot attempts), the Celtics ran away with this win in the final frame thanks to an unfamiliar face in crunch time: Jaylen Brown.

The 22-year-old guard played the entire closing period and was the best player on the floor for Brad Stevens in that time span despite an underwhelming first half. He scored 11 of his 13 points in the frame and limited Bradley Beal to just two points on 1-of-5 shooting in the quarter after Beal posted 27 points in the first three quarters. Amid an up-and-down season for the third-year guard, Brown did something Celtics fans have rarely seen all year long: Play well enough to force Stevens to keep him in the game as a part of the closing lineup.

“He was really good,” Stevens said. “He was really tough. He was into the ball. Didn’t have a great shooting night, as a lot of us didn’t have a great shooting night, but I thought for the most part really played with great – you know, great purpose and I thought really took the challenge of guarding Bradley Beal in the fourth quarter and did a good job on him.”

The Celtics collectively shot just 36 percent from the field in the fourth quarter and 2-of-11 from 3-point range, but managed to manufacture points with their defense. Brown was pivotal in helping force seven Wizards turnovers (leading to eight points), including back-to-back miscues by Beal that produced a 6-0 run midway through the period.

“Ridiculous,” Marcus Smart said of Brown's effort. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Jaylen play defense like that. He looked like me out there, diving for balls and things like that. We need Jaylen to do that every day. He has the athletic ability to do it. He has the potential to be a great two-way player so, once he finally gets that down it will be hard for anybody to keep him off the court.”

The performance marked the second straight game Brown saw action during crunch time and perhaps marked the start of a changing of the guard for Boston’s late-game hierarchy. Kyrie Irving, Al Horford and Marcus Smart seems to have firmly established their spots at this point, but the rest of the closing time opportunities seem very much up for grabs on a nightly basis between Marcus Morris (did not play fourth quarter), Jayson Tatum (benched for final four minutes) and Gordon Hayward along with Brown. One of the most pivotal parts of these final 20 games for Stevens and the Celtics is to find a group that has some rhythm and a defensive presence down the stretch of games while the offense is struggling. With Morris reeling on both ends of the floor in recent weeks, the door is open for Brown to step up and give this team a more athletic, mobile and versatile look on the defensive end.

“So, we’ll always close based on what I think we need to do with regard to how we can attack,” Stevens said of the closing group. “If it’s a one-possession game and how we need to guard, if it’s not. And you know, or a lower possession game that when we’re up 10 like that I just wanted to be as agile and switchable and all that stuff on the floor at the end of the game. So, you know, that’ll continue to play itself out as the season goes on different ways, game to game. But he’s really played well, for a pretty decent stretch now, and even again tonight when he didn’t make shots I thought he had a large impact on the game.”

Like anything with this team right now, it’s far too early to get too encouraged about any kind of progress. This was an ugly win against a bad team. Two solid back-to-back defensive games from Brown is not worth getting worked up over either, which came across during Irving’s presser, while the point guard focused on long-term consistency.

“That’s the effort we need to be successful every single night,” he said.

Brown’s offense hasn’t been good enough all year long to earn him a serious role during crunch time, but he has tools on defense that bigger wings like Tatum and Morris can’t match. There have been plenty of mental mistakes all year look by Brown, but he’s got the highest perimeter upside out of anyone on this team besides Smart when it comes to defense.

As Stevens tries to figure out the right formula to go to war within the postseason over the next couple of months, a defensive look may be the best choice for this group. Brown is best suited for that role, but it’s going to take more of what we saw on Friday night for him to earn that trust from his head coach.

“It’s who we are as a team,” Horford said of the improved defensive cohesion. “That’s what we need to understand. The other night against Portland, we had a chance, our defense was keeping us in it, we just didn’t make shots. Tonight, the defense was the difference again.”