BOSTON — In a less urgent moment, Jaylen Brown might have risen for a normal dunk midway through the second quarter. Not Friday night. Not with his team searching to find its usual spirit again. After losing consecutive games for the first time all season, the Celtics intended to right themselves against the Indiana Pacers.
After his second steal of Boston’s 142-105 win, Brown reached back for a cathartic slam. His windmill dunk brought his team’s bench to its feet. It flooded the entire TD Garden with energy. After a stretch of uninspired basketball, which included a Christmas Day loss at home to the Philadelphia 76ers, the jam sent the message that the Celtics were ready to soar again.
“Playing on Christmas Day is a privilege,” Brown said. “And we kind of let our fans down on our home court. We appreciate everybody for taking the time out of the day to watch us, and we didn’t put our best foot forward. So I think we wanted to come out and respond today.”
Brown responded by igniting his team, which established a season high for margin of victory. Though the All-Star scored 44 points on 16-for-24 shooting, Joe Mazzulla believed Brown’s defense was just as impactful.
“He was big time,” Mazzulla said. “He has the ability to impact a team, an arena just kind of with his energy and his physicality, and when he gets into a certain zone, he just gets locked in. And you kind of saw that on both ends of the floor. And I think the shot making is a distraction to what he does great defensively. So it was great to see that from him. I thought he was a catalyst to what we were doing on both ends of the floor.”
Brown scored 15 points in the first quarter. He added another 8 points in the second. He made his first nine shots of the game. By the time he missed his first field goal attempt with 5:21 left in the first half, he had already racked up 21 points. In the first half, he delivered a month’s worth of highlights for an average player.
THROW DOWN BROWN ⚡️ pic.twitter.com/teL8ttdhtD
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) December 28, 2024
The windmill didn’t count as Brown’s only flight of the night. Thirty-one seconds before it, he turned down a wide-open 3-point attempt to drive straight at Pacers shot blocker Myles Turner. Brown took off from outside the restricted area, cocked back his right arm and hammered a dunk over the top of Turner’s head.
Brown also put a little extra on his first dunk of the game. After intercepting a Tyrese Haliburton pass late in the first quarter, Brown slowed down in transition to lose the Pacers guard before rising for a two-handed slam. Brown swung on the rim for about a second afterward, then celebrated as Indiana called timeout. Brown’s defense led to plenty of offense throughout the game. He finished fast break baskets directly after three of his four steals.
“He can get locked in on a matchup and take that away,” Mazzulla said. “He can have a sense of physicality on and off ball. And you saw some steals that he was able to get. So I think he just creates a natural energy for our team when he plays that way defensively. He has the ability to really zone in on a matchup or on a certain situation defensively and take advantage of that. So he was great tonight.”
Brown brought the boom for the Celtics. Even the way they used him suggested they felt a heightened sense of urgency after losing four of their last seven games. He played all but two minutes of the first three quarters, then stayed on the court to start the fourth. Until he checked out for good with the Celtics leading 112-84 early in the fourth quarter, he played 37:14 of a possible 39:37. Mazzulla almost never plays Brown and Jayson Tatum next to each other for the entire first quarter. The coach essentially did Friday, though he subbed in Jaden Springer for Tatum to play the final 2.7 seconds of the period.
“It’s important to do that from time to time,” Mazzulla said. “Keeps us on edge, keeps them, keeps the other team on edge, can’t get a rhythm to what our sub pattern is and just creates an environment to where we have to be able to perform regardless of what we think is going to happen. So just work to do situations like that throughout the year.”
Brown capitalized on the additional early playing time by scoring his 15 first-quarter points. The other Boston players welcomed his two-way aggression. After one of Brown’s transition dunks forced the Pacers to call a timeout, Al Horford didn’t wait for Brown to reach the bench area to celebrate with him. With the Celtics looking like themselves again, Horford hopped off the bench to meet his teammate with a chest bump at midcourt.
The Boston players enjoyed returning to their usual brand of basketball after dropping two straight games for the first time all season. The Celtics shot 51.1 percent from the field and 41.1 percent on 3-point attempts. They drained 23 3-pointers while holding the Pacers to 11 makes from that distance.
“I think the adversity is kind of, you need that more to see what you’re made of,” Brown said. “So in those moments, you don’t get concerned. You kind of just look to your guys, look to your group. It’s an opportunity to get better. It’s an opportunity to see what we’re made of. So I never get concerned in those moments. You’ve just got to respond. That’s like my favorite thing to do is respond to adversity.”
Some NBA teams would barely react to such a small losing streak. The Celtics seemed genuinely upset by theirs. After Wednesday’s loss to Philadelphia, Mazzulla called his team’s recent play inconsistent. The players agreed. Jordan Walsh, who capitalized on rare minutes Friday with 9 points and solid defense, suggested it’s no secret why the Celtics are usually so good at minimizing their worst stretches. They haven’t lost three straight games since March 2023.
“I think the mentality is always to win every game, obviously,” Walsh said. “But everyone in this locker room hates losing. So losing a game, everybody hates that feeling. Everybody wants to come back and show everybody else that, yeah, we lost this game, but watch what we do next. This game was that time. Now it’s about can we keep doing it over and over again? Al talks about consistency all the time, so just staying consistently winning, consistently doing good things, good habits every single day leads to wins.”
The good habits started with Brown on Friday. He said he wasn’t concerned after the Christmas Day defeat against Philadelphia. Still, after the Celtics fell short on some of the details in that game, his intensity ensured they wouldn’t do it again.
“He just gets into a zone where he’s just laser-focused on his ability to get to his spot, impact a matchup defensively, make plays on the defensive end, get the ball where it needed to get on offense,” Mazzulla said. “So I think it’s just he has an ability to get himself somewhere to where he can really impact the game.”
(Photo: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
