With his injured co-star relegated to spectator status, Jaylen Brown delivered the standout performance the Celtics needed to seize control of their first-round playoff series.
Brown propelled the Jayson Tatum-less C’s to a 109-100 victory over the Magic on Wednesday with a 36-point, 10-rebound, five-assist, one-steal masterclass at TD Garden. The win gave Boston a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series, with Game 3 set for Friday night in Orlando.
It was one of the best postseason showings of Brown’s career, emphatically erasing doubts about whether he’d be in peak form after dealing with a painful knee injury for the final two months of the regular season.
“At the end of the day, he’s willing to do whatever it takes for us to win,” Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla said. “He didn’t come in saying he had to get 36 and 10. He came in and said, ‘I’m going to do whatever it takes to win.’ That’s what he told me yesterday, and that’s just the mindset that he has. Regardless of if it’s going well for him or not, he can take it to another level. He did that for us, and I thought the guys kind of fed off of that.”
Brown provided 12 of the Celtics’ first 18 points during a rock-fight first quarter, then opened the second half with back-to-back 3-pointers after Boston shot just 4-from-17 from deep before halftime.
Later in the third quarter, Brown scored on three straight Celtics possessions — including an authoritative fast-break dunk after he picked Magic guard Cory Joseph’s pocket at the opposite end — to stretch Boston’s lead to 14. Minutes later, he assisted on consecutive threes by Payton Pritchard.
Orlando stars Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner led a late-game rally, but Brown shut the door on the underdog visitors by scoring seven points in the final four minutes. He hit a high-arcing foul-line jumper over Banchero with 3:17 to play, then iced the game with a corner three in front of the Magic bench that made it 105-94 with 1:26 remaining.
“I mean, it was a physical game all night long,” Brown said. “So for me, just getting my jumper going, I think that kind of opened some stuff up, and just playing a game, that’s it. Getting to my spots. If you come down to it, it was just making plays for my team. It wasn’t too many X’s and O’s. It just came down to making plays.”
Brown’s 36 points were his third-most ever in a playoff game, trailing a pair of 40-point efforts against Miami in 2022 and Indiana in last year’s Eastern Conference finals. It was just his second 30-point double-double in the postseason, the first of which came in a double-overtime game against Toronto in the 2020 bubble. The 2024 NBA Finals MVP shot 12-for-19 from the field, 5-for-7 from 3-point range and 7-for-8 from the foul line.
“Obviously, he always transmits this kind of energy,” said center Kristaps Porzingis, who chipped in 20 points, 10 rebounds, two blocks and two steals in the win. “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. And he’s at the same time managing this stuff that he has. There’s no challenge big enough for him. Like, he can do whatever. He’s just going to keep taking care of it and keep playing the same way, and we’re going to be happy.”
Though it seemingly had the desired effect, Brown’s approach late in the season was controversial, even inside the Celtics’ locker room. He played seven times in an eight-game span from late March to early April — largely meaningless games for Boston, which was all but locked into the No. 2 seed in the East — despite nursing what he described as a painful bone bruise in his knee and looking visibly limited at times.
After the last of those games — an overtime win at Madison Square Garden in which Brown scored just six points and didn’t leave the bench after the third quarter — Porzingis praised Brown but questioned his decision to suit up rather than rest ahead of the playoffs. Brown proceeded to sit out the Celtics’ final three regular-season contests.
Brown and Mazzulla, though, expressed confidence in the four-time All-Star’s plan to be fit for the postseason. After his layoff, he showed improved burst and comfort in Boston’s Game 1 win, then carried the load in Game 2, topping 35 minutes for the first time since March 12. He played a total of 42 minutes, including all but the final 44 seconds of the second half.
“I mean, listen, he’s been great, consistent throughout the season,” Mazzulla said. “Towards the end of the season, (we) obviously worked through (the injury with) him, but you just trust the mindset and really the warrior mentality that he has. He knows his mind, he knows his body, and he can take it to another level mentally and physically. And (in Game 2), he did that for the team on both ends of the floor, especially to start that third quarter for us.”
With Tatum’s status for Game 3 uncertain as he recovers from a bone bruise in his shooting wrist, the Celtics might need to lean on Brown and his “warrior mentality” again Friday night as they look to push the scrappy but overmatched Magic to the brink of elimination.
“It’s just faith, consistency, hard work pays off,” Brown said, describing that mindset. “It’s something I live 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.”
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