Boston Celtics
Brown finished with a game-high 32 points, but he needed 10-for-28 shooting to accomplish it after starting 3-for-12 in the first half.
Jaylen Brown flirted with a triple-double and Payton Pritchard continued his torrid run off the bench as the Celtics walloped the Lakers in Los Angeles on Sunday, pulling away in the second half for a comfortable 111-89 win.
Here are the takeaways.
Payton Pritchard is dominating off the bench
Much has been made of the Lakers’ struggles against teams with winning records — they are 5-11 against teams with top-10 point differentials after Sunday’s loss — but the Lakers are especially troubled by teams like the Celtics, who have multiple players capable of dominating a 1-on-1 matchup.
On Sunday, Jaylen Brown (who we will get to shortly) was relatively inefficient as a shooter, despite being the game’s top scorer.
Instead, the Celtics relied heavily on Pritchard, whose return to the bench has — whether coincidentally or not — been reflected in an absolutely ridiculous run during which he has averaged 23.5 points per game while the Celtics won six of seven games.
Sunday’s game was the best of that run to date — a 30-point masterpiece against the Celtics’ historic rivals. Pritchard made a number of memorable shots, including a bail-out heave from the logo, a mid-range jumper after dropping Jarred Vanderbilt to the ground with a nasty crossover, yet another shot to beat the halftime buzzer, and — perhaps most memorably — a stepback 3-pointer that put the nail in an already well-built Lakers coffin for the evening, which left Jayson Tatum chuckling in amusement on the sideline. After Pritchard buried the dagger, he went skipping back up the sideline, barking at NBC commentator Reggie Miller as he went.
The Lakers are particularly prone to outbursts like Pritchard’s — he excels when he can attack a weak defender 1-on-1, and Luka Doncic, Jake LaRavia and Austin Reaves were all victims of Pritchard’s particular brand of offense.
Pritchard is, of course, a starting quality player on most NBA teams. That he is content coming off the bench for the Celtics speaks highly of both his maturity as a player and the Celtics’ project as a whole, where a player of Pritchard’s enormous quality knows that by sacrificing a small amount of pride, he can be a part of a team that can do big things in the postseason.
Jaylen Brown was inefficient but excellent
Brown finished with a game-high 32 points, but he needed 10-for-28 shooting to accomplish it after starting 3-for-12 in the first half, and he turned the ball over five times.
So why was he still a notably positive force? Several reasons.
First, Brown was aggressive getting to the rim to draw fouls, and he was rewarded so often — 9-for-12 from the line for the game — that the Lakers spent much of the game complaining to the officials about the calls.
Second, Brown was aggressive defensively, picking off three steals in the first half alone, all of which resulted in fast breaks. Brown seems to be hyper locked in whenever the Celtics play against Luka Doncic, and Sunday was no exception.
Third, Brown dished out seven very distinct assists — a kick to the corner for a no-dip Baylor Scheierman 3-pointer, a pick-and-roll dish to Neemias Queta, a full-speed dump off to Scheierman in transition, and a couple of garden-variety move-the-ball-along assists to shooters for 3-pointers.
Finally, like Pritchard, Brown is a deadly player when he can attack 1-on-1, and the Lakers offer a number of targets all over the floor.
Add all that up, and Brown had the kind of 32-point game superstars pile up over the course of the year — largely forgettable, but undeniably positive and very productive in a comfortable win.
Brown and LeBron James are okay
LeBron James seems to be very fraternal with Jayson Tatum — a video emerged of the duo teamed up on a golf course over the All-Star break, and they have interacted publicly numerous times.
James and Brown don’t appear to have a similar relationship. After the game, however, James was asked about Brown, and the Lakers star offered a lot of unqualified praise, saying that Brown is being overlooked as an MVP candidate and that the duo were going to be “fine,” even after Brown was caught by lip readers expressing doubt that James’ son Bronny would be an NBA player.
“Our relationship has been pretty respectful,” James said with a smile of Brown following Boston’s 111-89 win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday. “Besides the s–t he said about Bronny at Summer League. But other than that, we’ve been alright.”
James referenced Brown’s post on social media after the incident, in which Brown called it a “flex” to have your son in the league, lauding James’ longevity.
“Bronny has all the tools around him to be successful,” Brown wrote at the time. “I look forward to watching his growth.”
On Sunday, still smiling slightly, James conceded that his son still has “a long way to go.”
Nikola Vucevic is still coming off the bench
Notably, the Celtics gave Neemias Queta the majority of the center minutes by a small amount — 25 minutes to Vucevic’s 20, while Luka Garza played just under two minutes in garbage time.
Queta played well and posted a couple of ridiculous highlights, including this block on James in transition.
Vucevic, meanwhile, looked great offensively in his limited time, ducking and weaving around in the Celtics’ offense. He immediately seems to understand his role, which is to be a screen-setter first and foremost, and to then use his subsequent movement after setting the screen to put himself in a position where he could potentially score. The Celtics have not had a player who can flash to the middle as effectively as Vucevic since Al Horford was younger and a little more mobile, and they haven’t had a player with his arsenal of floaters and push shots.
Vucevic may have gotten a slightly shorter end of the stick against the Lakers given Doncic’s ability to torture big men who aren’t mobile side to side, or it simply might have been a quirk of the schedule. Whatever the case, Vucevic was really good once again — nine points on 4-for-6 shooting to go with eight rebounds. One of Brad Stevens’ best qualities as a GM seems to be his ability to grab a player who, in retrospect, feels like a no-brainer acquisition, but whom everyone else overlooked for some reason.
Luka Doncic looks terrible against the Celtics
Doncic is averaging a staggering 33 points, 7.8 rebounds, and 8.6 assists per game this season. In games when Doncic scores 30 or more points, the Lakers are 21-9. He flutters around the 2-4 range on the NBA.com MVP ladder. He is, by every definition of the word, a superstar.
And yet, if you are a Celtics fan, you might be excused for having a very different opinion of Doncic, because whatever he does against the rest of the league simply doesn’t translate against the Celtics. The Celtics have too many smart defenders, and too many offensive weapons who can turn Doncic’s traffic-cone style of defense into an entire offensive game plan.
For years, the Celtics used Al Horford to pull a similar trick against Joel Embiid, wearing the Sixers star down until he was hoisting inefficient 3s by the end of the game.
Doncic, like Embiid, is a superstar, but the Celtics have consistently shown how the biggest holes in his game can be exploited over and over.
Marcus Smart’s problems looked familiar
Seeing Marcus Smart on the Lakers is jarring, especially when he takes on the challenge of defending Brown with all the defensive pomp and circumstance that is such an integral part of the Marcus Smart experience.
Perhaps equally jarring is watching the Celtics employ the same defensive gameplan against Smart that teams employed against them for years: Dare him to shoot, because you know he dares to shoot, but you also know he probably shouldn’t.
Smart was 0-for-7 from the field and 0-for-5 from behind the arc. Out of respect for a Celtics legend and seemingly one of the NBA’s kinder souls, we have no further comment here.
The Celtics could still be a 40-20 team
Phil Jackson famously once said that to be considered truly elite, NBA teams needed to win 40 games before they lost 20.
The Celtics were perfectly positioned to be an exception to that rule, since they had the potential to bring Jayson Tatum back midway through the season and become elite after falling out of 40-20 contention.
Now, however, the Celtics have a chance to achieve that lofty mark before Tatum even returns — they are 37-19 after Sunday’s win.
Getting there, however, will be very hard: They face a road back-to-back against the Suns and Nuggets on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively.
If they battle through those two opponents unscathed, they can accomplish 40 before 20 by beating the Nets on Friday (which will be their fourth game in six days).
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