Jaylen Brown drops 44 as Celtics return to dominant form in win over Pacers: 10 takeaways
Brown did it all Friday night, from tone-setting dunks to a barrage of three-pointers.
Jaylen Brown and the Celtics bounced back from their first two-game losing streak in months with a resounding 142-105 victory over the Pacers on Friday.
Here are the takeaways.
Jaylen Brown was completely unstoppable.
Sometimes the Celtics win games because they overwhelm their opponent with their sheer volume of talent — highly talented guards bombing away from three, slashers cutting to the rim, big men spacing like guards and posting up overwhelmed mismatches.
And sometimes, they win because their stars are simply too good. Friday was one of those nights.
Jaylen Brown was nothing short of spectacular, posting 44 points on 16-for-24 shooting. He pulled down five rebounds, dished out three assists and — notably — picked off four steals.
But Brown was deadliest as a scorer, and he got off to a hot start, knocking down three of his six 3-pointers in the first quarter.
That set the stage for two huge tone-setting dunks. The first came off an offensive rebound — the ball found its way back to Brown, who streaked into the paint and won his game of Meet Me At the Rim with Pacers center Myles Turner with a monstrous one-handed punch.
Brown paused after the dunk and briefly mean-mugged the crowd, which cost the Celtics a 3-pointer — Tyrese Haliburton drilled a triple on the other end. But Brown made up for it on the next possession by scooting to the rim for a layup and then picking off one of his steals near half court and windmilling home another slam.
The NBA’s stat site has started giving dunks scores based on a variety of criteria, including power, style and contest. After his poster on Turner, Brown is now the only player in the NBA to have topped 100 twice.
Brown never really let up the rest of the way — the Pacers struggled to stay in front of him, and he had racked up 35 points by the end of the third quarter. Brown made a brief push for 50 at the start of the period, but Joe Mazzulla pulled him at 44 two minutes into the frame, and the crowd gave him a well-earned standing ovation as he took a seat.
“It’s just a rhythm,” Brown said afterward. “It’s like, you’re just in tune with everything. Like you’re just connected to the fans, you’re just connected to the game, everything is just kind of flowing all in the same direction, and you’ve just got to do your best to stay in that.
“Little stuff can kind of take you out of it. Anything. Arguing with the refs, or paying attention to other stuff, or whatever, you just got to do your best to kind of stay in that rhythm. And then I think you kind of can ride that and just enjoy that and play basketball from there.”
Jayson Tatum is an elite rebounder.
The NBC Sports Boston broadcast noted that Tatum probably doesn’t get enough credit for his work on the glass, and they might be right; Tatum doesn’t quite average 10 per game, and round numbers tend to make the most noise.
If Tatum keeps racking up games like Friday, however, he’ll be over 10 per game before long. He pulled down 13 boards in his 32 minutes, and he has now recorded double-digit rebounds in nine straight games.
Friday’s headlines will rightfully belong to Brown, but Tatum was excellent as well on the offensive end — 22 points on 15 shots to go with four assists and three steals.
Brown and Tatum both played the whole first quarter.
For much of the season, Mazzulla has alternated playing one of his stars for the entire first quarter before subbing them out.
On Friday, both Tatum and Brown played the entire period (or at least, very nearly; Tatum checked out in the closing seconds). Tatum then re-entered the game for Brown at the start of the second quarter, and Brown replaced him two minutes later.
“It’s important to do that from time to time,” Mazzulla said. “Keeps us on edge, 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.”
Jordan Walsh showed flashes of his potential.
The emergence of Payton Pritchard is a good reminder of the value a role player can provide when they develop from the draft.
Jordan Walsh isn’t a perfect 1-to-1 comparison since, unlike Pritchard, he was drafted in the second round and his contract structures will be different, but on a team that will soon badly need affordable production, his growth takes on an outsized importance.
Friday’s game was the type of performance that the Celtics might find really encouraging from their second-year wing. Walsh made two 3-pointers, and he got his feet perfectly square on both of them — the type of repeatable shooting motion that suggests real potential. If Walsh can become a solid 3-point shooter, the rest of his game should open up; he’s explosive when he beats his man off the bounce, and he’s long enough that he should eventually be able to extend over and around defenders. Late in Friday’s game, Walsh beat a defender off the dribble, then whipped the kind of collapse-and-dish pass to Xavier Tillman that we’ve seen repeatedly from his superstar teammates.
“I’m super comfortable,” Walsh said. “I used to get little butterflies, little nervous. But now it’s like, ‘Alright, I’ve got to go in, do my job, handle business and I got a job to do, so that’s what I’m going in to do.”
Defensively, meanwhile, Walsh looked solid, which matters quite a bit in his development. He has always had an element of chaos to his individual defense, which pairs nicely with his length and athleticism (and brought to mind Marcus Smart to some extent at lower levels, albeit in a very different athletic build).
But before Walsh can be a chaotic defender at the NBA level, he needs to be a solid one who holds his own consistently.
“He has really good physical defensive possessions that you don’t see,” Joe Mazzulla said. “You have to really watch the possessions. He stands guys up, he doesn’t open up his hips on angles. He’s physical. He got like two rebounds outside of his area. So he’s continuing to get better on the small things that really matter.”
Against the Pacers on Friday, his two-way work in 21 minutes contributed to winning, which was eye opening.
Sam Hauser is still looking for his shot.
Hauser went 0-for-5 from deep, marking his third consecutive game — and his fourth in five — without a 3-pointer. He went 0-for-1 against the Sixers and didn’t get a field-goal attempt off against the Magic. Prior, he missed a couple of games in a row, and while he went 4-for-9 against the Wizards, he was 0-for-2 in the Celtics’ Dec. 7 loss to the Grizzlies.
Hauser is now shooting 37 percent this season — by far his career low so far. A hot week or two could boost Hauser back into the stratosphere in which we’re accustomed to seeing him, but he still looks a little affected by the back spasms that have forced him to miss time.
Payton Pritchard nearly had a triple-double.
Pritchard finished 18 points, 10 assists … and eight rebounds, coming just short of a triple-double.
Pritchard might have been closer if Walsh hadn’t snagged a rebound that appeared to be falling to the smaller guard, which drew groans from a TD Garden crowd that – in the absence of a close game to follow – was heavily invested in his pursuit of the milestone.
“I’ve said this before: When you know you have something on the line like that, I don’t want to chase it because that don’t feel like it’s a real accomplishment,” Pritchard said. “You want to get it naturally in the flow of a game. And so, hopefully, I’ll get another opportunity, and I’ll get it done.”
Pritchard, Brown and Walsh were all wearing Brown’s signature shoes.
Brown’s signature 741 Rover shoes have started making their way around the Celtics’ team, and on Friday, three of the top performers were wearing them.
Afterwards, a reporter asked Brown and Pritchard — who took the podium together postgame — if there was a correlation.
“It gives you a little bit, like in 2K, it gives you a couple of points overall in quickness and rebounding,” Pritchard said. “ I think I had two offensive rebounds in a row. Maybe if I’m not rocking the shoes, I don’t have that quick bounce.”
Brown, grinning, quipped that if Pritchard gets a dunk this season, “it’s definitely the shoes.”
Friday was a return to Celtics’ normalcy.
The Celtics needed a strong win after underperforming against the Sixers on both ends on Christmas Day and after falling to a very short-handed Magic team two days prior.
Maybe most importantly, they needed to remind everyone that their defense can be stifling. On Friday, their defense opened with two sub-25-point quarters, holding the Pacers to 22 and 23 points in the first and second quarters respectively, which is one of Mazzulla’s favorite benchmarks.
But it wasn’t just the defense — the Celtics also assisted on 31 of their 47 field goals, and they got up 57 3-point attempts, making 23 of them (40.4 percent). The Celtics play a symbiotic brand of basketball where the offense flows from the defense which flows back into the offense. When something plugs that up, the opponent might have some success, but damming the flow of this roster isn’t easy — eventually, the water tends to break through.
Friday’s game was a flood — the Celtics’ highest scoring total of the season, and a return to the kind of performance we’ve grown used to seeing over the last two years.
The Magic and Sixers proved that the Celtics can’t simply cruise through the season. Friday’s win, however, was a reminder of how dominant they can be.
“I never get concerned in those moments,” Brown said. “You’ve just got to respond. That’s like my favorite thing to do is respond to adversity.”
Maybe we should all have the same New Year’s mentality as Payton Pritchard.
Pritchard was asked what he wants to focus on going into 2025.
“I think I’m going to continue the path I’m on,” Pritchard said. “It’s being balanced on the court, off the court, but just always getting my work in and always trying to find different areas to keep growing as a person.”
Following your path, getting the work in and finding different ways to grow – as far as New Year’s mantras go, one could do much worse.
The road ahead.
The Celtics will close 2024 with games against the Pacers and Raptors on Sunday and Tuesday before they head out for a four-game road trip against tough Western Conference opponents, including the Timberwolves, Rockets, Thunder and Kings.
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