Why Jaylen Brown says the Celtics should take their loss to the Jazz personally
"That's the time we are supposed to be our grittiest and it seems like we just fell apart."
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Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown expressed frustration after the team’s 122-108 loss to the Utah Jazz on Tuesday, most notably with the fourth-quarter struggles as Boston failed to land a series of comeback bids.
“We f****** should take it personally,” Brown said. “The fourth quarter was embarrassing. That’s the time we are supposed to be our grittiest and it seems like we just fell apart in a sense. That’s a lack of toughness and a lack of leadership, and a lot of that is on me. As a leader of this team, I take responsibility for how we respond and how we come out and in the fourth quarter. It just wasn’t there for us.”
Brown had an impressive return from two games off due to knee soreness, finishing with 33 points on 12-for-20 shooting. He told reporters his knee — which had been bothering him for “a couple weeks now” — flared up briefly in the third quarter, but overall, he felt significantly better.
The Celtics hung around, but they never seemed to gain momentum until they fell behind by double-digits in the second half. Behind Brown and Jayson Tatum (23 points), the Celtics rallied back several times. Each time they were rebuffed by a confident Jazz team with a ton of shooting, an impressive defense and Donovan Mitchell, who piled 36 points on 23 shots onto the Celtics. In the last three minutes, the Celtics were outscored 14-4. Mitchell scored seven points, and Rudy Gobert put down two exclamation-mark dunks onto the scoreboard at the end.
“Defensively we made too many mistakes,” Brown said. “They got what they wanted. Fourth quarter we’re supposed to be at our best defensively and that was almost our worst tonight, so that’s the reason why we lost the game.”
Brown noted that Utah has a different feel to its team this year.
“The way they played, the freedom, the flow they have to their team is really good right now, and we’ve got to find a better flow for ourselves,” Brown said. “We had some disconnectedness at times and the game almost seems a little harder than it should be. … You could see the difference between Utah and us tonight. Even though we had some opportunities to take the lead and make a run, you can definitely see they have a smooth flow to their team right now.”
Brad Stevens called the way Boston closed the game “disappointing.”
“But they put us in a bind and we were on our heels (in the fourth),” Stevens said. “… Not good enough to be great for 24 minutes against this team.”
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