Karalis: Jaylen Brown's most unlikely assist highlights a night where he showed his full capabilities

There are moments in life that you will be able to tell your grandchildren you were lucky enough to witness; flashbulb moments forever etched in your consciousness that take half an hour to set up and explain. 

The moon landing. 

Richard Nixon’s entering Marine One after his resignation. 

And Sam Hauser catching an alley oop from Jaylen Brown. 

“Too dramatic, John,” you might be thinking to yourself. 

“No, not dramatic enough!” I proclaim, standing on top of my desk in the TD Garden media room, yelling at the top of my lungs. 

No need to call security, frightened Celtics interns. I’ll be leaving on my own accord. But not before I tell this tale … with the help of some friends of course. 

“I did not think I’d see that tonight,” said Joe Mazzulla, who, as coach, can’t lose his mind like Luke Kornet did. 

What Kornet did was some kind of running, air punching, high-knees kind of dance. He wasn’t alone. Oshae Brissett, whose mind was already blown by an earlier baseline windmill dunk from Brown, summed up the scene quite perfectly.

“That? That was crazy.” 

Hauser is a legit 6-7. He’s tall. He’s an NBA player. He can dunk. Catching a lob in transition? That's not something to be expected very often. Catching one from Brown? 

“If someone wrote up a list of things that were about to happen, I think what happened was probably right at the bottom,” Hauser told me after the game. “But I’ll take it.” 

You want a list? I have a list. The lob falls behind “Jaylen Brown slips and falls and the ball rolls out of bounds” and “a frustrated Lamar Stevens flies off the bench, steals it from Brown, and dunks it himself, then is immediately cut from the team.” 

At the top of that list?

“I thought he was going to pass it to Sam and ask for the ball back for a lob,” Brissett told me. That makes the most sense. Brown, a mega athlete who was feeling himself in this game, got the ball right at half court. Standard operating procedure is the ol’ give it up to get it back. Hauser expected that too. 

Brown? He had other ideas. 

“I looked at him. He looked at me. And that was all the confirmation I needed,” Brown said. “We locked eyes and I said f--- it.”

It was the most unlikely of Brown’s eight assists, but it was the most fun.

Well, maybe this lob to Kristaps Porzingis was close. 

Robert Williams once singled Brown out as the teammate that was most likely trying to kill him with his errant alley oops. If we’re talking about things at the bottom of lists, that's where Brown’s passing has generally ranked among his many skills. 

Not in this game, and not lately, either. Even though he sort of reverted back to his old ways against Charlotte, he started out that game passing beautifully. His assists are up slightly, flipping the numbers in his career average of 2.3 to 3.2. This was his fourth game this season with at least five assists, so it’s happening about 31% of the time. Last season it happened about 21% of the time. 

"Well, it just adds another layer to us, and he's been doing more of that this year,” Al Horford said. “And it's something that he's conscious of and that he wants to continue to improve. But it was great to see his poise. And time and time again, reading the defense, making the right play and making the game easy. A lot of growth from him in that area."

The growth could be tied to the arrival of Porzingis. For some reason, these two guys have developed an instant chemistry. Five of Brown’s eight assists against Milwaukee went to Porzingis. 

Maybe it’s because they're neighbors who carpool to the airport together and sit next to each other on the team plane. Maybe they are just kindred spirits somehow. Maybe their games are just an instant match. 

“I don’t know what it is,” Brown said. “It’s just like an automatic connection. Like right now, just as soon as KP got here to Boston, it was just a connection automatically. So I’m looking forward to just getting better and growing.”

Whatever it is, it’s working. 

“Yeah, I absolutely love playing with JB,” Porzingis said. “I think we're starting to connect more and more, and it's becoming just natural for us. And yeah, and I'm learning his game. I'm learning his game, I'm learning the situations he likes to be in, and as you could see, we're having some success with it. It’s really fun. It's really fun to play with him and I look forward to more of those plays.”

This version of Brown makes the Celtics exponentially more dangerous. Completely in control Jaylen Brown is a version of him capable of swinging games, maybe an entire series. And maybe the best part of this game for Brown is that with all the passing and finding his teammates that he did, he was also the team’s leading scorer and he took the second-most shots. 

It’s a lesson served on a platter like many of the passes he was making against the Bucks. You can spend time finding your teammates because you’re such a good scorer, the shots will naturally find you. 

Of course, that's the second-most important lesson he should take from the game. The first is always look for Sam Hauser at the rim on the fast break. 

“If JB wants to throw me lobs more,” Hauser began as he walked off, “Sure! I’ll be ready.”