On a day that ends in “Y”, the Boston Celtics have won a basketball game, this time over the New Orleans Pelicans in a 117-109 route on Friday night. Boston’s potent offense continued to set the tone, as the team dropped 40 points in the first quarter in addition to 14 first half three pointers. The team’s shooting from deep tied the franchise record for most made threes in a half, and it’s the third time this season alone that the Celtics have managed such a feet.
Even with such a hot start, the Celtics were a few bad breaks from letting the game slip away, and it was mainly due to taking care of possessions. As a unit, the Celtics racked up a worrisome 17 turnovers during the matchup, and of those, 14 of these turnovers happened in the 2nd half. Jaylen Brown accounted for six turnovers by himself in that same half of play.
When asked about what led to the team’s late game turnovers against New Orleans, Jaylen Brown said “just being careless with the basketball, you know? We came out well, got to an early lead, and kind of took our foot off the gas a little bit. And that’s something that we gotta you know challenge ourselves throughout the year, it’s just to keep our foot on teams’ necks, don’t let up, don’t let them get back into the game. We were still able to win, but that’s something that we got to be better at and monitor.”
Brown finished the evening with 27 points on 10-of-20 shooting, in addition to 10 rebounds, 7 assists, and a noteworthy 7 turnovers. It was definitely something that was on his radar, and Brown didn’t shy away from taking ownership of his mistakes. “I know what I’m capable of,” said Brown, “I know I let the game get away from our team a little bit, (the Pelicans) got them back in the game and we got back settled in and found a way to get a win.”
So far during the early days of his tenure as Interim Head Coach, Joe Mazzulla has been particularly picky about when he uses his timeouts…and by picky, I mean he inexplicably refuses to use timeouts, and would rather let his team play through it and figure things out.
“I think so at times it’s good,” said Brown of the team working out the kinks on the court. “It challenges us not only for the situation at hand in front of us, but also the challenges to be better down the line. think that we’ve been in the NBA long enough to know how to get to our spots, and how to correct some of our mistakes and we got a poised team. So that’s a lot of trust from our head coach to do that, it instills in our players and in us to figure it out. So to be honest, that’s what you want as a player, and you want that relationship with your head coach. That he trusts you out there, that you’ll figure it out, and for the most part, we have this year. We just got to keep it up and continue to just set our bar at a higher standard.”
Boston boasts the best offensive rating as well as best overall record in the NBA, but it wasn’t a change that came overnight with this team, but a gradual slope of improvement over the past year. “I think we’ve definitely showed growth throughout the season,” said Jaylen Brown. “I think we’ve continued to get better, but I think we still have a lot of work to do…everybody holds us to a high standard but I’m sure fans watching the game could see areas where we can get better, and we see them too. We’re focused, we’re watching film… it’s a long season, we know guys are out, guys are hurt, but to still find a way to win games. It’s hard to do in this league, so we got to keep doing that.”
Boston will take on the struggling Chicago Bulls on Monday night, 8PM EST tipoff.
