PHILADELPHIA — Locker rooms open to the media an hour and 15 minutes before tip-off. They are open for 30 minutes. Reporters flood in. Sometimes, that leads to a one-on-one interview. On other, rare occasions, a scrum breaks out.
Those situations are often saved for reunions. Al Horford‘s first game against the Celtics after leaving in free agency. The same for Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis, and even Xavier Tillman Sr.
Tuesday night was no different. Roughly 20-30 reporters and cameramen huddled together in the Philadelphia 76ers’ locker room. Everyone was waiting for Jaylen Brown.
Brown never spoke. In fact, two 76ers staffers stood in between Brown — who was preparing for the game — and the media. At least one remained there for all 30 minutes, and at one point, when Brown had exited the room, one even joked about how much time the reporters had left.
Now, in fairness, it was the same situation for LeBron James. Philadelphia had people standing between him and the media as well. But the image of a massive hoard of reporters being separated from Brown by a literal human shield was emblematic. For the moment, it felt right. This wasn’t just another game.
“I made a joke — I walked out, I couldn’t tell if it was November 10 or June 10,” Tatum said. “It felt like a f***ing Finals game.”
Jayson Tatum, Brown, and everyone else can deliver as many PR responses as they want. After the lamb chops incident, it’s been a lot of ‘I just want to move on.’ And to a degree, perhaps that’s true.
But as tip-off inched closer and closer, those feelings faded away. Tatum walked up to Brown before the game. An acknowledgment. Brown didn’t give him the time of day. Tatum walked away with a smirk that said, ‘Well, I tried.’
“No headlines about anything like that,” Tatum, with a smile, said of the moment. “I was just getting ready for the game, ready for jump ball, go out there, compete, have some fun, and try to get a win.”
Once the game clock started, all those emotions that were being subdued for the sake of focus flooded onto the court. “Through the course of a game, it’s super intense, and competitive, and [you’re] competing, and playing on a high level with your teammates,” Tatum said. “So yeah, emotions throughout the game, of course. But leading up to it or right after is when I’m just like, just put things in perspective.”
In the first quarter, whenever Tatum touched the ball, the Philadelphia crowd rained down boos. As if he were the Kevin Durant to their Oklahoma City Thunder.
At the 10:05 mark in the first quarter, Tatum threw a bad pass. Brown stole the ball, and Tyrese Maxey scored in transition. Xfinity Mobile Arena went nuts. But a couple of minutes later, Boston returned the favor.
Tatum was guarding Brown in space. Brown clearly wanted to attack. He welcomed the moment. He wanted it. But Tatum stood strong, and Brown fumbled the ball out of bounds.
The entire Celtics bench stood up and gestured, ‘our ball.’ They kept that energy the entire night. Any time Tatum — or anyone, for that matter — made a big-time play, the entire bench was on its feet.
Whether it was the crowd, the Celtics’ bench, or the players on the court, this game felt like more than Game 11 of the regular season. It was more.
“It had a little bit of that early kind of playoff atmosphere,” Paul George said. “Wouldn’t say quite the intensity yet, but it had the atmosphere of it. Which, this building can be very electric as well. And it was fun. It was fun to play in this environment.”
Both teams wanted this game. No matter how much they preach ‘onto the next,’ which is a needed skill in this league, they wanted it. But the approach was different.
Brown looked for everything. But Boston read him like a book. The Celtics sent double teams at him to force him off the ball. Some of those turned into turnovers. Some into solid looks for Philadelphia. Others, into impressive defensive possessions.
On the other end, the Celtics looked for backdoor cuts. They wanted to catch Brown off-guard. Tatum hit him with one in the first half.
As the game went on, Brown tried everything to get going. But nothing worked. He got into foul trouble early, turned the ball over four times, and shot just 4-of-9 from the field. A massive moment turned into a silent night.
Tatum, on the other hand, didn’t press. He let the game come to him. He didn’t attempt a shot for the first three minutes of the game. His first bucket was a dunk in transition. Then, he was off and running (literally).
If a teammate had a better offensive opportunity, Tatum let them have it. If he had to make something happen, he took the chance. The emotions were high, that much was clear. But they didn’t affect his play.
“He didn’t change his demeanor,” Payton Pritchard said. “He went about it regularly, and that can be tough, especially with how many emotions are… and I thought he did a great job tonight, went out, and got us a win.”
For months, Tatum has been fielding questions about the Brown trade. In the last couple of weeks — the lead-up and follow-through of the lamb chops episode — those questions have ramped up.
Do you want to have a conversation with Brown? How do you fix that relationship? What really happened? Is there something you feel like you need to resolve there?
It’s been never-ending. For many, the storyline would seep into game day. An itch in the back of your brain. It would create the need or desire to prove something. But not for Tatum.
“They’re just words,” Joe Mazzulla said. “[It’s] not his life’s threatened. There [are] no weapons. No one’s throwing anything at him. No one’s attacking him. So, it’s not really that big of a deal. He’s probably been dealing with a spotlight since he was like 12 years old.”
None of the off-court drama affected Tatum. He played his game, and perhaps more impressively, he let his teammates play theirs. At every turn, all Tatum wanted to do was win. By any means necessary. Even if it meant not playing through him.
“To me, he doesn’t get enough credit for his emotional stability, his emotional intelligence, and his maturity,” Mazzulla said. “I mean, he just has an innate ability to stay focused on the things that he can’t control and the things that matter most. And I think it’s unfair to him because sometimes his quietness comes off as if he’s aloof or doesn’t pay attention or doesn’t care, but it’s the opposite. He’s just highly emotionally intelligent and has an innate ability to focus on the things you can control and the things you can’t. And he cares about being a great teammate.
“He cares about winning, and so it’s easy for him to handle stuff like this because it’s just who he is. So, tonight in the locker room, we said it, it means nothing tonight if we don’t play the way we need to play tomorrow. That’s just the nature of the business. We’re also on another road trip, and you have to win the game in front of you. So, his mental toughness is underrated, his emotional intelligence is underrated, and his ability to just stay focused on what matters most is one of his best gifts.”
Tatum got that chance in the second half. The chance to be selfless. The opportunity to prove that the off-court nonsense hadn’t overtaken his desire to win.
After heading into halftime up 62-51, the Celtics clipped. Or, more aptly, the Sixers kicked things up a notch. They went on a 25-14 run to tie the game at 76-76.
“You have to know the runs are going to come naturally because of their talent and their shot-making,” Mazzulla said. “So, as long as they’re not self-induced wounds on giving up offensive rebounds and and-ones. The run that they made in the third, just because they’re a great team, and we just have to build an awareness to that and stay composed to that and know that we can go on runs too.”
That was at the 3:50 mark. A media timeout charged to the 76ers stopped play and gave the Celtics a chance to regroup. Boston kept the same lineup on the floor: Tatum, Pritchard, Baylor Scheierman, Sam Hauser, and Mitchell Robinson.
Tatum could have come out of that timeout guns ablaze. He could have sought out his own shot, forced drives to the rim, or gunned for step-back threes. That’s not what happened. But that was the moment the game flipped on a dime.
“No, we didn’t talk about much,” Pritchard said of the timeout. “It was just about turning points. Like, okay, they made their run, how do we respond? Come out, execute. I think we end up hitting three right away. So, that’s part of it. Just the game is gonna have ebbs and flows. So it’s just about coming out, regrouping, and taking care of it.”
Boston didn’t just hit one three after the timeout. It hit three. Pritchard drained one, and Maxey responded with a triple of his own. Then, Pritchard and Hauser drained two more. A 9-2 run put the Celtics back up by seven points in 1:26 of in-game action.
The media war that had been broiling online hadn’t penetrated Tatum’s game-day mindset. Nor the Celtics’. Pritchard and Hauser sparked Boston’s surge forward. But George made the moment.
On a night that was supposed to be all about Tatum and Brown, George
