Failures of the past are pushing Jaylen Brown to play his best basketball in Boston

Jaylen Brown had just missed what would have been the dagger 3. After the Celtics had gone up 19, Phoenix strung together three straight buckets interrupted only by a Derrick White 3-pointer. With about three minutes to go, Brown’s attempt would have matched the Suns spurt with two quick strikes. But it rimmed out. 

Instead of hanging his head and lamenting the miss, Brown kept his head up and his eyes on the ball. Grayson Allen wanted to push the pace to catch the Celtics sleeping in transition, and maybe kickstart the kind of miracle the Cavs were able to pull off nine days ago. But as Allen tried to get it to Devin Booker, Brown planted, jumped into the passing lane, stole the ball, and posterized Allen for the exclamation point he had been looking for. 

“He wants to affect the game on both ends,” Joe Mazzulla said. “He has a quick ability to just get to the next play because he knows he can have an impact, and he's finding ways to get easy baskets. Like that's a way to get an easy basket. So he's finding different ways to score — not just having a play called for him, and he's taking pride in that as well.”

The quick ability to get to the next play hasn’t exactly been a signature of Brown’s over the years. In fact, Brown was notorious for letting mistakes linger, carrying them into the defensive end. It was not uncommon for him to get caught flatfooted, staring into space, while his guy broke backdoor for an easy layup. 

I can’t remember the last time that happened. 

“I feel like I've been growing every year I've been in the league,” Brown said. “Obviously, just as you get more mature and more experienced, things start to develop a little bit more but I think the ultimate … level of growth in this season is just like loss. Coming up short, really attacking your weaknesses, losing on your home floor one game from the finals, that can bring out the worst or the best in people.”

It took Brown a little while to get into the flow of things this season, but once he did, he has flourished. Somewhere in late November, Brown seemingly flipped a switch. His field goal percentage before December was at about 45%. Since December 1, it’s close to 53%. His assist percentage went up in December, January, and February (it’s down in March, but he’s been without his favorite target, Kristaps Porzingis). 

He’s been especially great since the All-Star break, averaging 29 points on 54% shooting (40.6% from 3). But as much as he’s been a monster on offense, Brown has been doing the job on defense as well. 

“We praise offensive and highlight offense and emphasize offense and basketball is two sides of the sport,” he said. “Being able to guard guys, being able to chase guys, being able to anticipate passing lanes, switch on the bigs, chase guys off screens, shooters. Whatever it is, I pride myself on being able to be versatile, because everybody can’t do that.”

Brown has always had the potential to be a great defender if he could stay focused for an entire game. Now that he’s grown into a more mature and focused defender, his entire game can be appreciated. Brown credits his defensive growth to “being able to learn from some of the best, taking stuff from Marcus (Smart), taking stuff from (Derrick) White, taking stuff from Jrue (Holiday), studying some of the guys that we have, tied to anticipation. This year I feel like I’ve been having a really good year on that side of the ball.”

This team will always go as far as Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown take them. One of the ongoing criticisms of this team is that they have missed too many chances already to bring another banner to Boston. Brown is carrying the failures of the past with him as a motivation to get better and, he hopes, erase whatever doubt exists about the Celtics' chances to win, and Brown’s ability to help lead them to a title.

“A lot of people, when things don't go their way, or if they lose or make a mistake, you get embarrassed, it could be like a spirit breaker,” he said. “Ain't nothing in this world that’s gonna break my spirit, so for me, it was only one way I could go and that was just to improve. That was just to get better, look yourself in the mirror, take whatever it is on the chin. I'll make no excuses, I don't point no fingers. I mean, that's always been my mentality. So we just get better and we leave it all out on the floor, and live with those results.”