BOSTON — Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown thought his first three quarters Friday night against the Minnesota Timberwolves was one of the worst stretches he has played in his entire career.
If that was the case, then Brown’s fourth quarter was one of his best.
Brown flipped the switch when the Celtics needed him the most, shrugging off his struggles to explode for 23 of his game-high 36 points in the final frame to lift Boston to a much-needed 121-109 victory at TD Garden.
“I felt like I had a lot of open looks. Wide open,” Brown said. “And sometimes when it’s so open, it becomes a different shot because you’re not used to it. But at the end of the day it’s basketball. So, I can score with the best of them. So, once I saw one go in, I was not taking my foot off the gas.”
Brown wasn’t playing anywhere close to All-Star caliber for the majority of the contest, including air-balling a wide open 3-pointer from the corner early in the third quarter.
But Brown showed his resiliency and felt it was only a “matter of time” before he broke out. He sure was right.
A 3-pointer over Naz Reid, who Brown had a confrontation with earlier in the game, a minute into the fourth quarter got Brown going. He caught fire after that by scoring in a variety of ways as the Celtics pulled away from the Timberwolves to snap a three-game losing streak.
For Brown, it wasn’t only his ability to score from anywhere on the floor that helped turn this around, but also an ironclad mindset that he was going to do whatever was needed to get Boston back in the win column.
“Obviously I haven’t played basketball up to my level,” Brown said. “We got a lot of critics in Boston, but I’m my biggest. My own toughest critic. So obviously, when you’re going through like a little stretch when you can be playing a lot better and obviously you’re going to be a little bit harder on yourself. … I have seen some of the highest of highs and lowest of lows. I’ve had nights where I didn’t miss a shot, and then I’ve had nights where it seems like I couldn’t make a shot. It be like that sometimes.
“You don’t hang your head. Get ready to try to find ways to impact winning and tonight we needed a tonight. I wasn’t going to allow myself to just stay in that same place all four quarters.”
