Boston Celtics
“I do think tonight, we took it to a different level,” Joe Mazzulla said. “It’s something that we have to maintain.”
Jaylen Brown during the Celtics’ win over the Thunder. Danielle Parhizkaran/Globe Staff
Jaylen Brown and the Celtics bounced back from a slow start and rallied to deliver the Thunder their first loss in their last 13 games, pulling away for a 119-109 victory.
Here are the takeaways.
Jaylen Brown played SGA’s game (and won)
In perhaps the most iconic moment of a game that featured a lot of highlights, Jaylen Brown hit Shai Gilgeous-Alexander with a move that probably looked a little familiar to the presumptive MVP.
With 7:37 remaining and the Celtics up by eight, Brown attacked SGA off the dribble and stepped back. He pump-faked twice, and those fakes were enough to get Gilgeous-Alexander in the air.
From there, Brown knew what to do — partly because he’s an excellent player, and partly because we’ve seen Gilgeous-Alexander do it so many times before.
Brown came away from the play with a big grin, and even Gilgeous-Alexander appeared mildly amused.
“He got me last time he played them,” Brown said afterward. “He got me on the up-fake and I knew it was coming, and I still jumped forward.
“So I guess I was able to pay back.”
Brown played a highly controlled game, getting to the basket against OKC’s ferocious defense and scoring 31 efficient points on 9-for-17 shooting. His complaints about the officiating — while costly in terms of both money and technicals — seem to have made at least some level of difference as well: He shot 12-for-14 from the free-throw line.
“I feel like maybe complaining has given a little bit more notoriety to how the game is officiated, and I feel like I’ve gotten more calls,” Brown said. “I thought the officials did a good job tonight. Every call is not going to be perfect, but I thought they did a great job of trying to keep it balanced or keep it the same both ways. So I have no complaints.
“But if they’re going to get those calls, as long as we get them too, I feel decent about it.”
Brown does not want to be fined further
Brown’s basket over SGA might have been the most effective basket as a narrative device for the game, but his monster dunk with four minutes remaining in the third quarter was his loudest basket — a devastating one-handed poster over Jaylin Williams. Brown caught a pass in the mid-post to initiate the offensive set, but rather than letting anything develop, he simply spun around Caruso and mashed home an enormous slam on Williams.
Afterward, Brown turned to the crowd and started to do a throat-slash celebration.
However, Brown would like to point out one very important thing.
“I stopped it though,” he said, with a big smile, pointing at the reporter for emphasis. “I didn’t. That’s the most important thing right there, the detail. I didn’t do it. Yeah. The people know what it is.”
We do, of course, know what it was, and so does the league office. Whether they concur that he stopped it in time remains to be seen, but the last time he did that celebration at Isaiah Stewart, he incurred a $25,000 fine.
Brown and Jayson Tatum were both dishing
Brown and Jayson Tatum finished with 15 assists total, tallying eight and seven apiece respectively.
Seven of Brown’s eight assists went to 3-point shooters as OKC collapsed to prevent him from getting to the rim, and the eighth was another kickout, which Payton Pritchard drove instead of shooting.
Tatum’s passing, meanwhile, followed a similar theme — taking advantage of the moments when OKC would send a double or hedge on a pick-and-roll screen — but he delivered several passes to the rim, where teammates got layups.
He also dished this pinpoint cross-court pass to Brown, which included a variation on the elevator play, as Derrick White and Luka Garza astutely snuck into position to prevent OKC from closing out.
“I thought JB’s playmaking vs. their smalls was great,” Joe Mazzulla said. “He handled the hedge well. Because we were getting stops, the floor was spaced, he was able to get into the paint when he wanted. I thought he made great reads. Even in the first half, I think three of his passes were to Sam’s threes that he missed, and so when you can get stops, when you can get to spacing, JB can make plays there.
“And then I think JT’s pick-and-roll ability to stabilize us and make reads out of pick-and-roll vs. the couple coverages that he saw, he was able to do that for us as well. So I thought it was a balanced game by the both of them.”
Tatum is getting closer
Tatum started slow, but he finished with 19 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists, and once again, he showed flashes of what he can do, even against an elite defense.
Maybe his best finish came in the second quarter, when he found himself isolated against Chet Holmgren. Tatum pulled back, then attacked the skinny big man, delivering a shivering blow to Holmgren’s chest that froze him in place, allowing Tatum to score the layup.
“Sometimes, the best moments are when I don’t have a chance to think, when I’ve just got to react and I have to move,” Tatum said. “Whether it’s coming off a ball screen or a closeout or you get a rebound, you’ve just got to take off with the ball. […]
“Each game, I kind of surprise myself with encouraging things. Certain plays that I just tally up in my head.”
Brown said the Celtics have been encouraging Tatum to be more aggressive.
“I think today was a great game of him making the right plays, making the right reads, being physical, and being Jayson Tatum,” Brown said. “And I think it’s a step in the right direction.”
Baylor Scheierman is making a case for himself
Scheierman was excellent in his starting role, and he has continued to play well off the bench since Tatum returned.
Wednesday was no exception: Scheierman scored 11 points and grabbed five rebounds while defending at a high level in his 20 minutes of action. He shot 3-for-7 from deep.
Should Scheierman start in place of Sam Hauser? Over the last 15 games, Hauser is hitting just 32.3 percent of his 3-pointers. Scheierman, over that same stretch, has made 41.2 percent. Hauser’s defense has improved by leaps and bounds, but Scheierman’s defense is one of his selling points as well.
The guess here is that the Celtics won’t do much to upset the status quo — lineups with Hauser, Brown, and Tatum are outscoring opponents by 9.6 points per 100 possessions, and Hauser perfectly fits the Celtics’ ethos of getting up shots rather than turning the ball over.
Still, Scheierman has been a revelation this year.
“He’s just got a knack for making plays,” Mazzulla said. “He doesn’t want to be defined by one thing. He doesn’t care if he shoots. He doesn’t care if he has to play defense, crashing, taking care of the ball, he just has a knack for making basketball plays.
“It’s a huge strength of his, and it gives us a different dynamic on our team. So he’s got to keep doing it.”
The Celtics needed that one
After the game, Brown didn’t shy away from saying that the Celtics needed a big win over a fellow contender, especially after their ugly loss to the Timberwolves on Sunday.
“We know we can play with anybody, but you get a win on your home floor against the team that has the best record in the league, feels good, especially after dropping a game I feel like we should have won against Minnesota,” he said.
“[…] We’ve got, I think, 9 or 10 games left, and we need each one of those to kind of build to get ready for the playoffs. But I think today was a very huge step for us and I’m proud of our guys.”
Mazzulla stopped short of calling it the best game of the season for the Celtics (“I don’t want to speak in absolutes, because I’m sure there’s been a bunch of other ones”) but even he conceded that the Celtics played well.
“I do think tonight, we took it to a different level,” he said. “It’s something that we have to maintain.”
What’s next
The road ahead doesn’t get much easier for the Celtics: They face the red-hot Hawks on Friday, followed by a road game against the red-hot Hornets on Sunday, followed by … another game against the aforementioned red-hot Hawks on Tuesday.
“Now it’s, ‘Okay, where can we get better? How do we apply it to Friday’s game?’” Mazzulla said. “I mean, they’re playing really well. They’re going to challenge us in different ways. How do we get better?”
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