We should have known right away.
The first three Celtics points came on a Jaylen Brown pull-up 3-pointer, which took advantage of the sliver of light allowed by a switching defense.
“Getting my jumper going, I think that kind of opened some stuff up,” Brown said after Boston’s Game 2 win over Orlando. “It wasn't too many X's and O's, it just came down to making plays.”
The Celtics found a way to make more plays than the Magic, even without Jayson Tatum, who sat out with a bone bruise in his right wrist. Orlando’s defense is good, but Boston is too deep to fully stop when one of their stars is out.
“Obviously JT is the offensive leader of our team. We all kind of play off of him, but any given night I could rise to the occasion,” Brown said. “I just do what the team needs me to do. I've taken that mentality, and I think sometimes people think that's the only thing that you can do. So tonight I got lucky, I guess, but we'll be ready for the next one.”
That statement drips with defiance. Brown has never taken a back seat to anyone, often bristling at the suggestion that he is somehow secondary to Tatum. And while it’s true that the Boston offense flows off Tatum, Brown has often been the engine of Boston’s success. The line about him getting lucky is a sarcastic middle finger to whomever he thinks is putting him in a box.
“Jaylen is very strong mentally,” Joe Mazzulla said after a recent practice. “I feel like he finds a way. He's the type where he's out here, putting in the work and trying to get himself ready to go. He understands what's in front of us.”
Whatever Brown is using to fuel him came through in historic fashion in Game 2. No Celtic has ever had his stat line while shooting that well from the field. He played nearly 42 minutes on what was supposed to be a bum knee and looked like there was never an issue.
“He always transmits this kind of energy,” Kristaps Porzingis said. “He’s willing to leave it all out there for the team and sacrifice himself, his body, for the game. And everybody respects that. And he was leading us today on both ends. He was doing JB. That’s what we expect from him.”
Brown set the tone with a 12-point first quarter and 13-point third, making sure Boston started each half well. From there, Porzingis, Derrick White, Jrue Holiday, and Payton Pritchard were all able to take turns throwing dirt on a Magic team that could not find similar support.
In a slog of pushing, shoving, grabbing, and who knows what else, Brown found help across the box score where the Magic watched the one guy who was supposed to be a clutch supporting player, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, only hit one shot.
But as much as the help was nice for Brown, Orlando still couldn't find a way to stop Boston’s star, even with him being the focal point of their defense.
“It was Jaylen Brown that got going more than anything,” Jamahl Mosley said. “He got downhill quickly, made some pull-up 3s, but that's what he’s capable of doing. … We knew that somebody was going to step up and it happened to be Jaylen in this situation.”
It never really “happens” to be Jaylen in these situations. Brown has the hardware to back up performances like this. This piece isn’t being written because it’s some big surprise. Maybe it would have been once upon a time, but it shouldn’t be at this point.
Sure, his knee is bothering him, and there was plenty of discussion of whether he should even play in this series. The prevailing wisdom was that the team was better off with him sitting out, letting the rest of the guys handle business while he healed.
Now that attitude has flipped to Tatum, thanks to Brown. With the Celtics up 2-0 and no conceivable adjustment from Orlando other than “we’re going home we hope that helps,” it’s easy to feel comfortable with Brown in the driver’s seat.
"It's just faith, consistency, hard work pays off,” Brown said, using the phrase that gave birth to the FCHWPO acronym he uses as his social media handle. “It's something I've lived by since the beginning. I think in my first interview with Boston, I said I was going to go to war for this city, and I don't think nothing has changed. So whatever it takes, every single night. You get out there and you hope for the best."
There's rarely a need to hope for luck. When a player’s best can carry his team to a playoff win, then his best is pretty damn good.
