“Towards the end, I could feel my heartbeat through my chest.”
That was true of most people in Boston or New York who were watching the Celtics and Knicks battle through two overtimes in their first game of the regular season. It was especially true of Jaylen Brown, Boston’s star wing, in the midst of a career-high scoring performance a day after leaving COVID-19 quarantine.
“Adrenaline kind of took over,” he said. “Once we got into that end of the first overtime and into the second one, I could hear my heartbeat, you know. I tried to do my best to breathe and stuff like that. For the most part, I felt fine to be honest.”
He sure looked fine.
The thing about this game from Brown is that it looked smoother and more effortless than some of his other performances. He wasn’t just hot, he was calmly creating. Brown, a guy who once drew cringes if he dribbled too much, was bringing the ball up and slinging the rock for assists.
Brown was also once a guy who, in transition, would get the ball and simply run as fast as he could in a straight line and hope his athleticism would carry him through the play. Now he’s doing this:
Oh and remember when Brown developed and grew into a spot-up guy in the corner who then attacked closeouts and that was it? Yeah, now he’s running pick-and-rolls like this:
And, of course, the first criticism was that Brown couldn’t shoot.
“He's a hooper, man. He is a pure hooper,” Robert Williams said after the game. “He is a bucket. He loves the game ... I expected nothing less.”
I’ll put my hand up and say I was more than happy to put him in the “spot up and attack closeouts” box a few years ago. To me, he had grown into a far cry from when he was drafted. That spot-up guy, a 3-and-D guy, was going to be a valuable piece to the Celtics.
He wanted more, though, and he picked up some tricks along the way from teammate-turned-opponent Kemba Walker.
“He’s one of the masters in the pick-and-roll, how to manipulate the pick, how to create offense in that area,” Brown said. “I think I made jumps being a ball handler in the pick-and-roll, being able to talk to him, study him, watch him.”
The ball handling has unlocked the potential in Brown. The tighter handle began to show itself before the COVID-19 shutdown, and it has only grown since. Instead of waiting for the pass, he just gets himself free. Knowing that he can do that just gives him even more confidence to get into his shot.
“He carried us tonight,” Jayson Tatum said. “The plays he was making, the shots he was hitting, he was unbelievable. I wish I could have done my part to help him out tonight, but it happens like that sometimes.”
Tatum and Walker were the top two teammates assisting Brown a couple of seasons ago. In this game, Tatum and Brown fed off each other a little more than usual, with each assisting the other twice.
But it was Brown who was cooking while Tatum was trying to light his stove. Now that Brown is in more command of his game, he feels like he can demand more when he clearly has it going.
“I think that I would have liked to have had it in my hands more because I feel like I would make the right play,” he said. “Having the ball and being hot is a responsibility. It’s not about you gotta score, or shoot it every time.
“I think I made some really good plays and reads and we got some good open shots that we missed. But it’s the first game of the season, and to be honest, we got so much to learn and improve and to grow, so I was pleased with how we kind of handled things. So I’m not going to get -- when you get hot, we gotta keep going to that guy, run the action through him. You gotta continue to harp on that and trust him to make the right play.”
Brown has earned the right to make these kinds of demands, so long as he lives by them when the situation is reversed. It’ll be up to Ime Udoka to figure out how to make that work. Brown seems willing to abide by that.
“The reason why I wanted to play tonight was because I didn’t want to miss his opening game,” Brown said. “I wanted to come out there and be there for our coach. And we fell short today, but Ime, he was resilient. ATOs were great. I think he did a really good job tonight. We just gotta clean some things up, watching film, I think we’ll be alright.”
In some ways, the dichotomy between Brown and Tatum in this game leads us to the most important aspect of the Celtics' future.
He’s right about needing the ball more on a night like this. He’s worked to raise his game to that level. He’s now at the point where, on a night like this, even a presumed All-NBA -- potentially MVP-level player, should take a step back and let his teammate cook.
Brown has earned that, and if all these elements of his game continue to shine, he’ll be making his own All-NBA case.