DALLAS — Jaylen Brown held the release on his final jump shot Wednesday night as if he couldn’t stand being a passive observer of the basketball’s fate. With his right wrist still bent in a follow-through, he bounced several times as the attempt arced toward its target. Even with the ball out of his hands, he hopped like a bit of excited energy could still influence whether the shot became a swish or a brick.
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The Boston Celtics, after leading Game 3 of the NBA Finals by 21 points earlier in the fourth quarter, were in danger after a desperate Dallas Mavericks push. A Brown miss would have opened the door to a stunning Celtics loss and maybe even a pivotal shift in the finals. Brown might not have been thinking about the full magnitude of the possession in that second, but, with one minute left and the Boston advantage down to two points, it was the most important play of his career.
To free himself for the game-clinching attempt, Brown had dribbled right, around a Derrick White screen and then crossed over to his left. A second Mavericks defender had converged on Brown, but he had patiently stopped and delivered an up fake. That had produced the opportunity he wanted, a pull-up jumper on his terms.
The bucket gave the Celtics a 3-0 series lead.
So many times over the years, the Celtics have put the ball in someone else’s hands with the game in the balance. This time, they ran the offense through Brown. Jayson Tatum headed for the left wing to give his teammate space to operate. Shoot or pass, make or miss, it was Brown’s responsibility to decide what the Celtics would do.
Last season, when his team most needed him to run the offense in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals, Brown believed he had let down the city of Boston. He didn’t deliver then, but success often traces back to past failures.
Brown came through in Game 3 of the NBA Finals, just like he has over the rest of the postseason. The most efficient, consistent and unflappable playoff run of Brown’s career has put his team on the verge of a championship. He began the season determined to prove himself as one of the world’s best two-way players. Now, on the NBA Finals stage, he’s showing he deserves to be regarded that way.
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“He’s such a hard worker,” said Celtics assistant coach Tony Dobbins, who works closely with Brown. “He’s so motivated to just keep improving and he finds ways to find fuel from different things that happened. He could easily, because of some of the things that he may have accomplished the last few seasons, think, ‘I could relax, I could lay back a little bit.’ But it’s almost like the more he accomplishes, the more motivated he becomes. And I think that’s a great quality to have for somebody who is a major part of your organization.”
Jaylen Brown agreed to a five-year, $304 supermax extension last summer with the Celtics. (Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
After signing the biggest contract extension in NBA history in July, Brown used his news conference to emphasize he wanted to set a defensive tone for his team this season. Without Marcus Smart, who the Celtics traded in June, Brown wanted to ensure his team suffered no defensive slippage.
Privately, Brown told others he wanted to make an all-defensive team. Though the Celtics acquired Jrue Holiday to form a potent defensive backcourt with Derrick White, Brown asked for the toughest assignments.
“The interesting thing about it was, for whatever reason, he wanted to carve his niche,” Dobbins told The Athletic. “That was something that he was very intent on saying: ‘I want to show that I’m one of the best two-way players in the league and the way that I do that is on a night-to-night basis taking on the defensive challenge.’ ”
Those around Brown have long emphasized his commitment to steady growth, but he ramped up his intensity after the disappointment of losing to the Heat in last season’s Eastern Conference finals.
“It drove me all summer,” Brown said. “It drove me crazy.”
Brown changed his workout regimen. He altered his daily approach. He obsessed over preparing himself for the rigors of playoff basketball.
“He spent time in the swimming pool doing workouts,” Dobbins said. “He’s on the court, he’s on the bike, he’s doing combat training. … I think that’s the interesting thing about him and the way that he works on his game, it kind of mirrors the way he lives his life in terms of that inquisitiveness, that curiosity, that pursuit of learning information and growth and pursuing different avenues and knowing that ultimately the culmination of all those efforts and pursuits is going to lead to a better version of himself.”
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The key offseason acquisitions of Holiday and Kristaps Porziņģis helped, but the Celtics have blitzed through the playoffs so far partly because the returners, charged by past failures, were able to level up.
Nobody embraced that task more seriously than Brown. He understood teams wouldn’t defend the Celtics during the regular season like the Miami Heat did during the 2023 postseason, so he tried his best to simulate all sorts of defensive coverages on the practice court. He invested the hours to learn how to see the game differently.
Before that Heat series, Brown had shown the rare ability to carry over his regular-season efficiency into the playoffs. Not many players can accomplish that feat against top defenses dialed into their game plans. Brown couldn’t do it against Miami. He didn’t know how to attack the Heat’s constantly shifting coverages. He sensed the need to adapt, but couldn’t quite see how. After Tatum sprained an ankle in the opening minute of Game 7 in that series, Brown committed eight turnovers and shot 8 of 23 from the field (1 of 9 on 3-pointers) in a performance that stuck with him over the offseason.
“It was embarrassing,” Brown said Thursday.
Embarrassing enough to power a transformation. Already an All-Star and All-NBA player, he returned with a sharper edge and a deeper ability to process the game. Before much of the world noticed, he declared in December that he was playing the best basketball of his life. Not all of the statistics supported his claim at the time, but he has proven himself correct, especially in the postseason.
Over the Celtics’ first 17 playoff games, Brown is on pace to set playoff career highs with 24.9 points per game and 54.3 percent shooting. He won the Eastern Conference finals MVP award, named after Larry Bird, and is the betting favorite to win the NBA Finals MVP through the first three games of the series.
Brown has reduced his turnovers throughout the playoffs like he set out to do. After averaging 29.8 points per game against Indiana, easily his highest scoring average in any series throughout his career, Brown has followed that by averaging 5.7 assists per game against the Mavericks, which also would be a career-high for any series. Brown has made several of Boston’s biggest playoff plays. His 3-pointer at the end of regulation forced overtime in Game 1 against Indiana. His assist to White completed a big comeback to close out the same series in Game 4. Brown has shot at least 50 percent from the field in seven straight games and 14 of Boston’s 17 playoff games so far.
“One of the things that I noticed is just the poise to be able to handle the highs and lows,” Dobbins said. “And I think that in a micro version, you see that through the course of a game, and then the macro version, you see it in the course of the season. And just maintaining a level of consistency emotionally that allows you to stay poised.”
The Celtics trust Brown with the ball in his hands now like never before. He treats each possession with more care.
“I think definitely it’s been some growth,” Brown said, “but I think this team has trusted me, especially in this playoffs and those moments to just be who I am. I felt like I’ve been able to deliver just by being patient and being poised. Those opportunities have presented themselves, and I’ve been able to take advantage of them.
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“But I give all my credit to my teammates for the trust they had in me to have the ball in my hands and to be able to make those plays.”
In these finals, he has picked up Luka Dončić full-court consistently while still having enough energy to generate much of the Celtics offense. Though Brown didn’t reach his goal of making an all-defensive team, the pursuit prepared him for the rigors of taking on the toughest challenges. Even while shadowing some of the most difficult covers in the league, he has not worn down physically. Not many players can stay fresh while carrying such responsibilities on both ends of the court.
“It didn’t work out for him in a regular season based on the voting, but it did serve him well because it wasn’t like he was trying to flip a switch and say, OK, now the playoffs are here, I’m going to start raising my defensive intensity level,” Dobbins said. “That was something that he had identified as an area of growth and an area of focus from the start of the season. I think even though he had to deal with the disappointment of feeling like he may have been slighted in (the all-defensive voting) a bit, it did serve him well-prepared for the playoffs and to be in a position to showcase why he thought he was deserving of that recognition.
“I think he’s done a great job of using that perceived slight to fuel him to try to showcase it on this stage and say, OK, you may not have thought I was worthy of his distinction in the regular season, but I’m going to take a step further and show you that in the playoffs, I am deserving of this. And I think that that’s the best way to handle it in terms of the way he felt he was slighted.”
That wasn’t the only way Brown felt slighted. After he failed to make any of the All-NBA teams, he said he watches players get “praised and anointed” who he considers half as talented as he is on either end of the court.
Brown believes he warrants more respect. He thinks his value is often overlooked. The best playoff run of his life should bring him more love, but that’s not his priority these days. He’s one more win away from what he wants most.
“The strength of this group, part of the strength, is that they have been strengthened by the past disappointments,” Dobbins said, “the times where they have fallen short or not reached the goal that they wanted. And it’s matured them individually and it’s matured them as a group. That journey has taken them to the point where I think the collective strength of the group is that everybody wants to win more than they want anything else.”
(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photo: Jordan Jones / NBAE / Getty Images)
Jay King is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the Boston Celtics. He previously covered the team for MassLive for five years. He also co-hosts the "Anything Is Poddable" podcast. Follow Jay on Twitter @byjayking
