Jaylen Brown is riding the roller coaster right now. His two highs were pretty high and his two lows were very low.
“The contrast of some of those previous games ... and the way you see him come out tonight is kind of mind boggling,” Ime Udoka said after the loss to Washington in which Brown notched 13 points on 5-16 shooting and contributed to a fair share of defensive miscues.
That’s sharp criticism from the coach.
“It didn't bother me,” Brown said of the comments on Friday before the team’s flight to Washington. “It's mind-boggling to me too.”
For Brown, the confusion stems from his body being unable to bounce back like it had in the past. Brown, who just turned 25, joked that “this can’t be what it looks like on the other side.”
No, Jaylen, that’s something different. But trust me, that sucks too.
What this actually seems to be is a side-effect of COVID-19 that has sapped his body’s ability to recover.
“I feel great. And then it feels like instead of playing one game, it kind of feels like I played three,” he explained. “I’m used to my body responding and recovering a lot faster.”
He also says he’s having joint pain, which is another byproduct of the virus. Unlike Jayson Tatum, whose lethargic play last season was caused by breathing issues that required an inhaler, Brown’s breathing is fine. His body, though, isn’t responding to what used to work.
“I usually go through a routine. And that routine works. It’s money,” he said. “I’ve been doing it for a couple of years. Even after a hard game, I do my routine and I should be fine. And I still have some lingering joint pain, I still have some fatigue in my body.”
Brown says rest won’t be the answer. After not only COVID, but the long layoff to start the preseason, Brown and the team believe he needs to work on his conditioning to help make the recovery part easier.
“Really push through, focus. Change my routine, increase whatever I need to do, make whatever sacrifices,” he said. “I’ve gotta get over the hump, get my body to where I feel like Jaylen. I haven’t felt like Jaylen out there every single game. And that’s what I want to do.”
MARCUS SMART OUT SATURDAY
Smart has been dealing with some kind of illness for a week or so, and it has apparently caught up to him.
“He's been up and down,” Udoka said. “He's played through some stuff and played well and helped us. But just been feeling up and down the last few days and didn't feel great this morning.”
Smart is off to a horrific shooting start this season, hitting just 25.5% from the field and 23.5% from 3. If his early shooting woes are connected at all to this illness, then some time off might do him good.
FOCUSING ON FOCUS
Al Horford looked downright despondent after the Wizards' loss. The lack of energy and focus weighed on him enough to look as disappointed as he ever has after a loss.
Udoka said he told the team they’d get their asses kicked if they carried their shoot-around energy into the game, and the team did it anyway, leading to some ... ahem ... honesty after the game.
Players said they wanted to be coached harder and held accountable, but as Mike Tyson once said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Were they truly ready to accept this kind of accountability from their new coach?
“They've been great,” Udoka said of his teams. “(I) let them know what I see and at the same time, look within ourselves as coaches and what we can do to help them be better. But our guys are resilient. They're tough. They've fought back from deficits throughout the year and I'm just trying to really impart playing that way from the start and not letting a team out-hustle you, out-scrap you and start to play when you get down double digits.”
Brown has been one of Udoka’s strongest supporters.
“We have an understanding of each other,” he said of his coach. “There’s a lot that goes into being with a new group, but at the end of the day we’re all men - we can all talk to each other. Issues can get resolved a lot easier that way, by communicating with each other rather than hearing about it in the media, etc., sometimes. Just communication as we continue to improve. Then we’ll be fine.”
If the team wasn’t fine, there was no indication of that at practice.
“It was great, it was high energy. We showed a ton of film, probably the longest film session of the year so far,” Udoka said. “They responded well, had a lot of dialogue in the film session. Guys talking about what they saw and how we can get better at certain things. And so they carried over to practice today and we're excited to get another chance at Washington tomorrow.”
Ultimately, the goal is to all work for the common good, and doing so requires some level of calm and patience along with the directness and honest conversations. The outside world can panic and podcast their way through it, but the Celtics are trying to keep perspective.
“It's five games in, we got 77 left. So it's not time to panic or do anything drastic, throwing chairs and flipping tables or any of that,” Udoka said. “It's a long season and I understand that and the players do as well. We've had a lot of ups and downs through training camp and adversity early and once we make it through that, we feel we will be on a good page.”
CLEANING THE GLASS
The Celtics are 24th in the NBA in offensive rebounds allowed, giving up 11.6 per game, and 28th overall in opponent’s rebounds per game (50.8).
One reason for this is the switching defense that is pulling bigs like Robert Williams and Al Horford away from the basket to guard the perimeter.
“We tried to triple switch and kick our smaller guards off and so sometimes that has hurt us as well with Jaylen, Jayson, some of our bigger wings have been boxed out as well,” Udoka said. “So it's not just the guards being hurt down there, some of our bigger wings.
“But it's an effort thing ... when it comes down to it, the end of the day, we got to gang rebound and a lot of times, guys are standing on the perimeter watching a guy fight one-on-one down there and so it's something we worked on today. Showed a lot of film today on the area we definitely have to clean up.”
ETC...
- Bruno Fernando has been assigned to the G League Maine Celtics.
- Romeo Langford was upgraded to questionable for the Wizards game with left calf tightness.
