Jaylen Brown May Not Be the Celtics’ Best Player, but He Is Everything They Need

AP Images/Ringer illustration By sharpening his skill set without losing his edge, Brown has turned a long-simmering question into the Celtics' most reliable force The Boston Celtics nearly lost Game 3 over the course of eight minutes—all the time it took for the championship favorites to fritter away a 21-point lead in the fourth quarter, allowing the Dallas Mavericks back into a game and a series that should have been effectively over. And perhaps the Celtics would have lost Game 3, but for the resolve of Jaylen Brown. During those eight minutes, Brown was the only Celtic to score. First, after Dallas surged to a 12-0 run, he sealed Luka Doncic in the post and canned a Doncic-esque fadeaway over the top of him. Then, following another 10-0 Mavericks run, Brown patiently waited out a Jayson Tatum drive so that he might swoop in for a putback off his costar's miss. Both baskets were, on their face, unremarkable. Yet they were all that Boston could do to stem the tide at a point in the game when all the momentum had shifted in Dallas's favor. "Big time," Derrick White said. "Big-time shots." It was in keeping with a trend: When the Celtics do fall out of sorts, it's usually Brown...