Boston Celtics
Pritchard told reporters he thinks Brown was expressing pride in a successful regular-season.
Jaylen Brown playing for the Celtics during 2025-26 season. AP Photo/Charles Krupa
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Jaylen Brown has said, on multiple occasions, that this past season was the one he liked the most of his decade-long NBA career.
To some, the comments were perplexing. How could this season, when the Celtics blew a 3-1 lead at home against a lower-seeded team in the first round possibly top 2024 when the Celtics won the title and Brown was named MVP of the NBA Finals?
Perhaps people are taking Brown’s words out of context, Celtics guard Payton Pritchard told reporters, per a video posted by 7News’s Ari Alexander.
“I think people took it wrong,” Pritchard said. “I feel like, with what we were supposed to do this year and overcoming that and becoming the No. 2 seed and having a successful regular season, I think that’s what he meant by that. People kind of targeted this as a regroup, not make the playoffs type of year [for us] and he had a tremendous year. He should have been first-team All-NBA.”
Brown spoke throughout the year about how much fun he was having. He was, for the bulk of the season, the Celtics’ No. 1 scoring option while Jayson Tatum was out for an extended period of time while recovering from offseason Achilles’ surgery.
Payton Pritchard defended Jaylen Brown and his “favorite year” comment:
“I think people took it wrong, with what we were supposed to do this year and overcoming that and becoming the #2 seed and having a successful regular season, I think that’s what he meant by that.” pic.twitter.com/O7lFxSrANw
— Ari Alexander (@AriA1exander) June 8, 2026
In the aftermath of the Game 7 loss to Phialdelphia, Brown told reporters that this was “one of the most fun years” of his career while talking about how proud he was of the way his teammates competed.
He made similar comments on his Twitch stream later that week. He heard some of the backlash the comments generated and doubled-down on them during a separate Twitch stream.
Because of how different his role was compared to past seasons, Brown was asked multiple times throughout the regular-season about how he felt things were going.
His comments about this being his favorite season date back at least as far as this past December, but they gained a new level of traction after the Celtics were eliminated.
Few expected the Celtics to finish the regular-season with the second-best record in the Eastern Conference with Tatum missing the bulk of the games.
Brown raised his game, finishing sixth in the MVP voting. The Celtics willed themselves to 56 victories and home-court advantage in the opening round.
Boston fell short in the decisive Game 7 with Tatum unable to play. Brown finished one rebound shy of a double-double with 33 points and nine boards along with four assists.
“Special group,” Brown said on his Twitch stream. “I’m so proud of the way that we played and I wish that we trusted that style of play a little bit more but I know that the playoffs kind of shifted our rotations and what we wanted to do.”
“But, I’m so proud and it was my favorite year of my basketball career.”
Khari A. Thompson
Khari Thompson covers professional sports for Boston.com. Before joining the team in 2022, Khari covered college football for The Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Miss.
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