Jaylen Brown Emphasizes Celtics' Tough 'Mentality' Following 36-Point Performance
All-Star Jaylen Brown drains eight 3-pointers in a 126-107 win against the Wizards
In the Celtics’ first blowout win of the young season, Jaylen Brown delivered the best first-half shooting performance of his eight-year career.
Leading the Washington Wizards with a whopping 77-51 advantage at halftime, the Celtics capitalized on Brown’s 7-for-10 shooting from beyond the 3-point arc. It’s the most threes he’s drained in a first half since December 2020, when he made six against the Memphis Grizzlies, per Statemuse.
Jaylen tallied 27 first-half points en route to a game-high 36 points, including eight threes, which was two shy of his career-high (10). Boston cruised to a 126-107 victory, improving to 3-0.
In each win, a different Celtics player led in scoring. Following Jayson Tatum’s 34-point dominant performance that led the Celtics past the New York Knicks in their season opener and Derrick White’s 28-point gem against the Miami Heat in Boston’s first game (119-111) at TD Garden, Brown led four Celtics players in double figures, including Tatum (33), Kristaps Porzingis (15), and Jrue Holiday (11) in the nation’s capital.
For the second consecutive season, the Celtics are off to a 3-0 start. Last year, in Joe Mazzulla’s first year as head coach, Boston leaped to an impressive 21-5 record — a feat Brown and the Celtics could top this season with its revamped roster and refocused approach.
“It’s important that we get off to a good start to this season,” Brown said after Monday’s win, per NBC Sports Boston. “Mindset, mentality is something that we’ve all been preaching. Joe (Mazzulla) has made sure; he’s emphasized that. As a leader on the team, I’ve been making sure that we’re emphasizing that. We gotta get through the finish line. It’s nights like tonight where it’s easy to take your foot off the gas.
“But if you want to do what you say you want to do, we gotta come out and play the game the right way.”
After a forgettable 11-point performance in the Celtics’ season opener at Madison Square Garden, where he went scoreless in a competitive fourth quarter that went down to the wire, some wondered if Jaylen would have trouble finding his footing in Mazzula’s revamped offense. One that now features a 7-foot-3 scoring center in Porzingis, whose offensive prowess extends beyond the 3-point arc, and a third All-Star in Holiday running the point.
All five members of the Celtics’ starting lineup hone enough talent to dominate a game on any given night. It’s an advantage NBA teams dream of, and it didn’t prevent the two-time All-Star from delivering his first 30+ point game of the season.
Still, Jaylen’s been around long enough to understand a talented roster doesn’t always yield success in the end. And while Boston is off to a terrific start as the only team in the Eastern Conference that remains undefeated, he knows it’s still a long way to go, and consistency is critical.
“It’s tough being talented because it invites laziness, it invites complacency,” Brown said. “But, that’s going to be our enemy this season. It’s going to be us vs. us. Our leaders on the team, we gotta make sure we really emphasize really from the top to the bottom. We gotta run through the finish line.”
The Celtics will host the Indiana Pacers at TD Garden on Wednesday before traveling to Brooklyn, Minnesota, and Philadelphia to take on the Nets, Timberwolves, and Sixers in their first three-game road trip of the season.