THE CELTICS — JAYLEN BROWN IS STILL OPEN! — ARE HAVING A BLESSED SEASON
Eyeing 65 wins with three victories over 50 points, this is the NBA’s finest team, in part because Brad Stevens stole Jrue Holiday while Damian Lillard talked on TV about missing clutch moments
Every year, says Damian Lillard in his TV swirl, thousands of athletes “disappear” in clutch moments. He points this out as a girl drops a set of weights in his Gatorade commercial. Rehydrate, replenish, refuel. We’ve seen him emphasize it for months, since the day he was traded by Portland to the Milwaukee Bucks.
But what no one noticed days later was how Brad Stevens made the better trade, maybe an all-time brute classic. Dame Time? The NBA’s ambassador of Tissot? For now, Lillard has become secondary in a steal of Jrue Holiday, who was sent to the Trail Blazers and immediately acquired by the Celtics. Never mind pairing Lillard with Giannis Antetokounmpo. Placing a premier two-way guard with Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown might turn green into championship wherewithal amid a historic time in Boston, where an 11-game winning streak is accompanied by the best net rating — plus-11.5 — since the 1996-97 Bulls.
How about comparisons to a dynasty, with the league’s highest offensive ranking ever? Tatum is an MVP candidate. Brown makes $304 million. Holiday already is a member of the U.S. Olympic team. Wouldn’t we drop everything to see them play the Denver Nuggets, a matchup of clubs that grasp the nuance of success in a league of highway robbers? Nikola Jokic demands a dynasty. On the parquet floor, the Celtics could interfere with his latest Serbian horse race.
“This is, I think, the best version of this team that I’ve seen,” Steve Kerr said after his Warriors were ambushed Sunday in a 140-88 drive-by. “The idea is to give yourself a chance as many times in a row as you can. And they’ve done a great job of that. I think it’s just a matter of time that they break through.”
Are we watching the 18th championship of the Celtics, breaking a tie with the Lakers? All because Stevens, who has made New England nervous by reaching the Finals once and the Eastern Conference finals three times, is ambushing grotesque competition that includes Draymond Green, who let Brown make open three-pointers by giving him an absurd extra five feet. Not since Paul Revere paused on his ride did the city experience such bated breath. “First time it’s ever happened to me. I was a bit surprised. If you wanna dare me to shoot, we can do that,” Brown said. “I thought it was a little disrespectful, but we took advantage and we didn’t look back.”
“Just flush it and move on,” Green said. “It ain’t work. Oh, well. We move on. I thought it was fun to try. I was actually all for it. Let’s try it. See if it works. If it don’t, oh well. So we move on.”
A brilliant mindset, right? “We wanted Draymond to be able to help on drives and make sure we weren’t giving up easy stuff,” Kerr said.
Easy stuff? Brown converted five three-pointers in a flash. Instead, said Stephen Curry, “That’s what we used to do to teams. The way that they’ve been playing, they seem very sure of themselves in their identity and who they are. Give them credit. They came out and whooped us tonight from the jump.”
Watching the attack was Holiday, whose poise is what physicians ordered on a team of too many knuckleheads, including Kyrie Irving. “I mean, everybody can see what he does on the court. He’s a really good player, multiple time All-Star, defense has been well-documented,” said Stevens, the basketball president. “But I think he’s an elite teammate and an elite competitive character. You’ve got to pay a good price for things, right? That’s the way it goes. We’re trying to win a championship. This speaks to our ownership’s willingness to spend regardless and our eagerness to be the best possible team we can be.”
The front office also gets a pass by hiring Joe Mazzulla as head coach. He was the surprise pick after Ime Udoka was fired for having a romantic affair in the office. In the postseason, he looked overmatched in losing to Miami’s Erik Spoelstra. Now, he has turned loose the demons. “The level of mindset that we played with the entire game — I always appreciate the guys who have to play when it’s a lead and you keep that mindset and that physicality up,” he said. “I think that’s the most important thing. For our team, the two questions are if we play as a team and maintain our humility, what are the possibilities? And if we don’t play as a team and we don’t keep our humility, what are the consequences? And that’s the balance that we have to understand. Tonight, we saw who we are at our absolute best.”
They’re feeling June, including Brown, who finally did something we’ve wanted for years. He shut up Draymond. “This is the best group I’ve been a part of,” he said. “We have experience, we’ve grown, we’ve matured. We’re primed and we’re ready. It feels great, but, at the same time, it’s always within humility. We don’t take the game for granted. We didn’t come and mess around and that’s how we show our respect to the game. We handle business and take care of it. It’s a lot of respect for the Golden State Warriors, but we feel like it’s our time now.”
Three times, they’ve beaten teams by 50 or more points. They are on pace for 65 victories in an Eastern Conference where Joel Embiid is injured and the Bucks, with Antetokounmpo suffering from left Achilles tendinitis, are eight games behind. Can Lillard and Giannis and Doc Rivers even contend? Dame Time managed 41 points Monday night in a win over the Clippers. His watch will have to work overtime.
“The best team in the NBA,’’ Luka Doncic said.
The best in a while, we might say.
###
Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.