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Jaylen Brown dominates, scores 50: 5 takeaways from Celtics vs. Magic
"The growth with JB is very real."
Here are the takeaways as the Celtics put together an impressive rally late against the Magic to claim a 116-111 overtime win, led by a career-high 50 points from Jaylen Brown.
1. On Friday, after helping the Celtics beat the Suns without Jayson Tatum, Brown was asked by a reporter whether he likes being the primary scorer on a team.
“It’s a role that I haven’t been asked to play at no part in my career,” Brown said. “… Sometimes it doesn’t look as good, but when I figure things out, watch out.”
Brown’s performance on Sunday against the Magic made his post-Suns bravado sound more like a prediction. Setting aside a sloppy first half (which resulted in five of his seven turnovers), Brown put together a monstrous 50-point performance (19-for-29) on a night when the Celtics needed all 50. He buried several 3-pointers in a row in the first half, which has been his strongest stretch in recent weeks, but a big second half lifted him to a career milestone.
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Most of Brown’s second-half baskets came driving and cutting to the basket.
“The growth with JB is very real,” Marcus Smart said. “I think we’ve all witnessed it.”
Brown noted after the game that the Celtics needed a win — otherwise “the media wouldn’t have been good” — and said he didn’t realize he was having a big night until late in the game.
“I looked up and I had 47 and I was like, ‘Damn,'” Brown said. “Then I hit the three off the Smart pass to get to 50, but I wasn’t even really paying attention until it got to that.”
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How the Celtics can get both Brown and Jayson Tatum to feed off each other more consistently remains the season’s most pressing question, but Brown reminded everyone how good he can be.
“Good days and bad days, but I’ll continue to learn and grow in those positions and help my team down the line,” Brown said. “We’ll get rolling, especially when we get [Jayson Tatum] back, and we get the rest of our guys back.
“These last couple of games I think I’ve learned a lot.”
2. Dennis Schröder went to the podium holding a signed No. 7 Brown jersey. When asked about it, he smiled.
“That’s for my nephew,” Schröder said. “That’s his favorite player. He got 50 today, so I thought it was a good time to let him sign it.”
Schröder said it was “about time” Brown scored 50 after Brown excelled in the first two quarters while Schröder was in health and safety protocols (before assuring reporters it wasn’t that serious).
“End of the day, he’s just trying to play the right way and tonight was being aggressive and going downhill,” Schröder said. “And nobody could stop him tonight. So I think that’s what he needs to do more often: be more aggressive.”
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3. A play that might get forgotten (but shouldn’t be): With less than a minute remaining, Marcus Smart ripped away a steal and found a streaking Brown for the dunk to tie the game.
It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this play to the Celtics’ comeback. When Smart ranged over to pull the ball away from Mo Wagner, the Magic big man was isolated against Schröder. A basket would have given the Magic a four-point lead with 40 seconds remaining.
Instead, Smart created the turnover that evened the score and reset the game for the Celtics.
“We let the game come to us,” Smart said. “It wasn’t pretty, but we came out with the win and that’s because we kept our composure and we kept with it.”
4. The Celtics dug themselves their hole thanks in large part to 23 total turnovers.
“Everybody is out there trying to make a play, and they did a real good job when we were trying to make those plays of loading up to us,” Smart said. “We were just a step slow.
“But it’s all in good faith and with good intention. Everybody was just trying to make a play.”
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In the end, the Celtics escaped relatively unscathed: The Magic managed just 23 points on those 21 turnovers, outscoring the Celtics by just two.
The glass-half-empty look is that the Celtics finally overcame their tendency to let a game snowball against a team that might not be talented enough to roll a snowball. The glass-half-full response might be that the Celtics needed to gut out a win at some point just to prove they could do it, and Sunday’s game was a prime opportunity.
5. Both Schröder and Brown made lighthearted references to New Year’s resolutions regarding some of the Celtics’ worst habits.
“We’re trying to put ‘20-21 behind us,” Brown said. “It’s a new year. We’re trying to start off on the right note.”
“I mean, we had that,” Schröder said, when asked about the Celtics’ patches of inconsistency. “I think it’s a new year, 2022, so we’ll try to work on that.”
The thing about resolutions, of course, is that they are famous for not sticking (gym rats notoriously despise the first week or two of January). They can provide us with some much-needed optimism, especially after a tough year, but that’s not enough. For a resolution to stick, it has to become more than a resolution — something you look forward to and prioritize.
Still, as Brown put it (quoting his Twitter handle): “Faith, consistency, hard work pays off.”
The Celtics are 1-0 in the new year. That’s as encouraging as progress on a resolution can be on January 2.
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