The Celtics open each home game with a few songs aimed at pumping up the crowd, including Guns N Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle.” Before this game against the Rockets, they were better off starting with the more melancholy “Fake Plastic Trees” by Radiohead. It would have been more appropriate for the mood that permeated the Garden for most of the night.
The Celtics' 126-102 win over the Rockets was mostly what it should have been, and all of what we expected it to be. The Celtics took a ton of 3-pointers, partly because it’s what they do, and partly because they didn’t want to do much else. The hangover of a huge win over Milwaukee hung over the parquet like stale cigarette smoke and the faint smell of cheap, flat beer. If the Rockets were any good, they may have had a shot at making this a much closer affair.
The Celtics are a championship contender while folks in Houston are learning how to pronounce Victor Wembanyama’s name. Boston treated this like a sparring session, taking some punches and firing back with a few of their own until they decided they’d grown weary of it all. Kevin Porter, Jr. and Jalen Green had their outbursts (Porter with 12 in the second quarter and Green with 18 in the third). But when the Celtics' big guns Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown decided to fire, they did so in a hurry.
“It’s always a little easier when you got JT and JB,” said Damon Stoudemire, who was pressed into coaching the game when an eye issue sidelined Joe Mazzulla just before tip. “That’s not a bad start. But this group has been together a while. So you can organize them and then they know how to play. That’s the biggest thing. That benefits everybody else. When they play well, everybody else around them tends to play well.”
They played well alright. If each had made one more basket, they’d have been the first Celtics teammates to score 40 points apiece in a game. Even though they came up just short, it made this performance no less impressive.
It wasn’t even that their games felt dominant. Aside from Brown’s post-flagrant outburst, it didn't feel like this was much more than two All-NBA level guys getting their kicks against a young, bottom-dwelling team. But the fact that these two guys are at that level also says something about how good they can be.
It’s like Ice Cube rapping about messing around and getting a triple double. Tatum and Brown were almost casual in their near 40-point games.
"I think we've just gotten better with experience,” Brown said. “I think Jayson's playing at an all-time best level for him. We just coming out, playing, being aggressive. I think that's the key to our offense. … You get to play with that freedom that's out of respect for each other. You get out there and make plays, that's it."
Facing the Rockets, and other young teams like these guys, puts Brown and Tatum in an almost surreal position. Jalen Green was born in 2002, so he was 15 years old when Tatum and Brown first took the floor together. As much as we see the Jays as young stars, the rookies and young players entering the league now were looking up to them as burgeoning NBA stars.
“It's almost like when you first get into the NBA, you're playing against your idol or a guy you really look up to, right?” Stoudemire said “So what do you do? You go get a good meal, you get a haircut the day before, then you go get some rest, right? … Jayson and Jaylen, those are the guys now. So guys are coming at them and they're going to have to understand every night that they're put on a pedestal and they're the barometer in a lot of different ways.”
Being the barometer is an honor, for sure. The “hunter becomes the hunted” dynamic is always an interesting one in the NBA. Brown is embracing the stature.
“That's something that I don't take for granted,” he said. “I used to be looking at certain matchups, too, when I first got into the league. Anytime you play guys like LeBron (James) or Carmelo (Anthony) when you first got into the league, you got the same look in your eyes. It's just the circle of life and it's just something you gotta be ready for coming into the game."
In the battle for NBA dominance, Brown and Tatum are very much young and strong enough to bat these young challengers away like play things. Sure, a few will get their shots in and some battles might leave them scarred, but the Jays and their generation are in their primes and ready to own the league for years to come. This year’s MVP race is a great example of that. While Tatum and Brown were giving their postgame quotes, Luka Doncic was dropping a never-before-seen 60-point, 20-rebound, 10 assist triple double.
Doncic doesn’t really have much help. Tatum and Brown have each other, which they seem to appreciate more by the day, and especially on nights where they can almost waltz their way to an easy win.
“It’s crazy. This time last year y’all wanted to trade either one of us, now you just said Mike and Scottie,” Tatum said when he was asked about being in the same scoring stratosphere as duos like Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. “So we’re not as bad as you guys say we are but we’re not as good as Mike and Scottie, yet. We’re just two young guys that love to compete, love to try to help our team win every night and just try to get better. But we gotta win. We gotta win when it counts most for it to really mean something.”
