Boston Celtics
Brown put up 41 points in the loss.
Jaylen Brown had a monstrous game, but the Celtics couldn’t pull themselves out of an offensive slump in time to beat the Timberwolves on Saturday, falling 119-115 in Minnesota.
Here are the takeaways.
Jaylen Brown nearly did it.
The Celtics can’t beat good teams without a good game from Jaylen Brown, and he gave them a big one even by his standards on Saturday.
Brown scored 19 in the first quarter alone, getting the Celtics off to a fast start by scoring in nearly every way imaginable. The Timberwolves have wing stoppers — Jaden McDaniels is a defensive stopper, Anthony Edwards is no slouch, and Rudy Gobert in theory should make scoring at the rim difficult — but Brown has shown throughout this season that he has an answer for almost anything an opposing team can throw at him. He finished Saturday’s outburst with an efficient 41 points (17-for-32 from the field, 5-for-11 from three) to go with six rebounds, seven assists and five steals including a crucial one in the fourth quarter that helped the Celtics break out of an offensive funk and tie the game in the final minutes. No Celtics player in the franchise’s history has put together that particular statline.
The absence of Jayson Tatum has made two things abundantly clear. First, and most important: Jaylen Brown is an All-NBA quality player, full stop. As the lone star on a roster, he can elevate a team full of solid role players to “good,” which is a whole lot harder than it sounds (just ask the other Georgia native playing in Saturday’s game, who we will get to in a minute). Second: Being the lone superstar is grueling work. Brown grinded through nearly 40 minutes on Saturday, and while he put up a gaudy statline, his team still lost in large part because only Sam Hauser made an efficient number of 3-pointers as well (4-for-10, bolstered by a last-second window-dressing 3-pointer).
The Celtics will, of course, be much better when Tatum comes back, but they might benefit (at least to some degree) from his absence in that it has made clear how good Jaylen Brown can be, as well as the limitations on any team driven by one star player — even a star as singularly brilliant as Brown is proving himself to be.
Anthony Edwards delivered a knockout punch.
The Celtics cost themselves dearly late multiple times.
First, the offense got completely bogged down, which allowed the Timberwolves to build a lead as big as 12 in the fourth quarter behind a brilliant stretch by Anthony Edwards.
Then, after the Celtics went on a 12-0 run to even the score — led by Brown and Neemias Queta, who we will get to in a minute — they lost track of Mike Conley in the corner, who hit a three that immediately put them on the back foot once again. Rallying back once is difficult, especially in the small amount of time the Celtics had (and especially against an offense that has the potential to be as potent as the Timberwolves). Rallying back a second time is rare, in large part because the regression to the mean that the other team is likely to experience isn’t likely to swing back in your favor a second time.
Finally, the Celtics were done in by the fact that Edwards is a special player and can do things like this.
There’s not a whole lot more that Derrick White can do on a play like that — Edwards didn’t create a lot of space, he dribbled the ball off his own foot, and he was forced to fire up a highly contested 3-pointer with his body facing the wrong direction.
None of it mattered. Edwards somehow got his shoulders square and buried a no-doubter directly in White’s face, a dagger from a genuine superstar making the kind of plays that a superstar makes at a time in the game when a superstar thrives.
Edwards finished with 39 points on 12-for-24 shooting.
Neemias Queta has been consistently better.
The Celtics survived a chaotic game without Queta against the Pistons, but they needed him back, and he returned with a staggering line — 19 points on 7-for-8 shooting to go with 18 rebounds and a pair of blocks. In the first half, his offense was crucial — his scoring around the basket offers a depth and dynamic that is otherwise sorely lacking. Perhaps more importantly, Queta dominated the offensive glass — eight of his 18 rebounds kept possessions alive. Those offensive rebounds helped foul Jaden McDaniels out of the game in the fourth quarter (which was helpful for Brown), and his defensive boards jumpstarted the Celtics’ furious fourth-quarter rally.
One of Queta’s biggest improvements this season, meanwhile, is his screening. Last season, Queta picked up a lot of unnecessary fouls, many of which were due to his sloppy screening habits — when you have to defend physically around the rim, you can’t afford to also give away possessions by moving your hips or your feet when ball-handlers are trying to navigate their defenders around you.
It’s not entirely clear how good Queta can become, or even whether this current run of form is the new normal. But on a Celtics team that came into the season without a proven NBA center, Queta has been revelatory.
Derrick White wasn’t perfect (but he was good).
White’s shooting struggles are well-documented this season, but he made several plays that bordered on spectacular — including one relatively unremarked-upon play where he blocked an alley-oop attempt from Edwards to Rudy Gobert (which counted for nothing in the box score) as well as a swat at the rim, erasing a drive by Edwards (which, of course, counted for one of his two blocks). He also made a huge 3-pointer that capped off the Celtics’ 12-point run in the fourth quarter, and he drew a big three-shot foul that kept them in the fight even after Conley’s 3-pointer gave the Timberwolves the upper-hand.
White hasn’t been perfect (2-for-8 from three, 6-for-16 from the field), and Celtics fans (and members of the media who are currently writing these takeaways) who thought he might have an All-Star caliber season were, of course, far out over their skis.
But White makes big plays, and he’s often still a positive player, even when he struggles with his shot. How good the Celtics can be this season is likely to be dictated by whether their struggling shooters come around, and White will be one of the prime drivers.
The Celtics needed more from Payton Pritchard and Anfernee Simons.
The second half wasn’t kind to the Celtics, but it started to slip away in earnest at the start of the fourth quarter with Brown on the bench — a run that continued even after he returned.
Those moments are crucial for Payton Pritchard and Anfernee Simons, neither of whom was good enough offensively on Saturday.
Pritchard is often helpful defensively — or at worst, not actively hurtful — but he was 4-for-14 from the field and 1-for-8 against the Timberwolves.
Simons, meanwhile, played just 17 minutes. He was 2-for-4 and made his lone 3-point attempt, but when he was entrusted with primary ball-handling roles, he looked overwhelmed.
The Celtics were outshot from 3.
The Celtics won several of the margins — including an impressive 14-5 showing on the offensive glass — but the Timberwolves were 21-for-48 on 3-pointers (43.8 percent) while the Celtics were 16-for-46 (34.5 percent) after going 7-for-24 in the second half. Last season, the Celtics won a lot of games by simply overwhelming their opponent with made 3-pointers. On Saturday, the Timberwolves made five more triples in the second half alone, which adds up to an extra 15 points.
That’s hard to overcome.
What’s next
The Celtics will travel to Cleveland to face the Cavaliers on Sunday at 6 p.m. before returning home to face the Knicks and Wizards on Tuesday and Thursday respectively.
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