If there were any questions about how Jaylen Brown would look after missing Sunday’s game due to knee soreness, he answered them emphatically in the Celtics’ 140-129 overtime win over the Hornets on Monday.
Brown did it all, recording 30 points on 12-of-20 shooting to go along with nine rebounds, three assists, three steals and a block. All that was great, but it was his dunk with 1:21 left in OT that will be most remembered.
Not only did it put the Celtics up five and essentially seal the win, but it also put Miles Bridges on a poster. Jayson Tatum led the fast break and dished to Brown, who saw Bridges stepping toward him and decided to just dunk right over him with violent force.
“Miles is obviously one of the better athletes in the league, so I knew if I just laid it up, he was gonna send it back to Boston,” Brown said. “So I knew if I went up, I was going up with bad intentions.”
That play was one of eight assists for Tatum, who had a second straight big game. He scored a game-high 41 points in 41 minutes on 14-of-28 shooting and had seven rebounds as well.
Unsurprisingly, it was Brown and Tatum who led the Celtics’ comeback late in regulation after they trailed by 12 with six minutes to go.
Brown had six points down the stretch and a key block on Mason Plumlee. Tatum scored five points, blocked a Kelly Oubre layup, assisted on a Marcus Smart three, and set up Robert Williams for this beautiful alley-oop.
Williams pulled down 16 rebounds on the night, including some big ones down the stretch. Smart added in some classic Smart plays to help force overtime, most notably stealing an inbound pass from former teammate Gordon Hayward in the closing seconds.
Dennis Schroder had his best game with the Celtics yet, registering 23 points, eight assists and six rebounds. His best work came in overtime, when he opened the OT scoring with a layup, tied the game at 129 all with a big three with 2:41 left, and then set up Brown for a go-ahead three that gave the Celtics a lead they wouldn’t relinquish. After Brown’s monster dunk, it was Schroder who turned into the closer at the line, hitting all four of his free throws in the final 1:10.
The Celtics will still feel like they have work to do defensively after giving up 30-plus points to the Hornets in each of the first three quarters, but the fourth-quarter comeback and overtime dominance have to be encouraging given some of Boston’s struggles in late-game situations last year and one overtime loss already on their record this year.
“Obviously very resilient,” Celtics coach Ime Udoka said of his team. “We jumped it up a little bit, started trapping a little bit, tried to break their rhythm. Made some big plays, hit some big shots, and it worked out in our favor. … Builds character, builds the team. This time they said, ‘Let’s finish the deal in the first overtime.’ As you can see, 18-7, we really locked in defensively in the overtime.”