Celtics
Tatum and Jaylen Brown combined for 71 points in Saturday’s win.
Jayson Tatum scored 40 points, and the Celtics snapped the Lakers’ eight-game winning streak with a 111-101 victory at TD Garden on Saturday in one of the biggest (at least narratively) games of the season.
Here are the takeaways.
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown were brilliant.
Separating Tatum and Brown in the takeaways would necessitate placing one above the other, which doesn’t seem particularly appropriate.
Tatum was phenomenal – masterful on the offensive end with 40 points on 12-for-28 shooting, including several huge 3-pointers and 12 trips to the free-throw line. His numbers this season haven’t been career-highs, but the level to which he manipulates and dominates offensively is unlike anything he’s achieved so far in his already decorated career. The Celtics can torture teams with matchup hunting because Tatum is so singularly gifted, and because they have surrounded him with players who take advantage of his gifts.
Brown, meanwhile, was similarly great on the offensive end – 31 points on 13-for-25 shooting – but defensively, he once again made Luka Doncic’s life difficult. Doncic scored 34 points (and we’ll get to him in a minute), but he worked hard for all of them, and the effort he put into the offensive end clearly subtracted from what he could do defensively (which, not-so-incidentally, was also the case in June).
The Celtics are incredibly fortunate to employ two players for whom that isn’t the case.
“The toll that it takes – the mental and emotional and physical toughness that it takes to do what Jaylen is able to do like he did tonight is just high-level by him,” Joe Mazzulla said. “Jayson’s ability to take pride…