DALLAS — Jaylen Brown put on a show in the Celtics win against the Mavericks which included one moment Luka Doncic would probably like to forget. The Celtics All-Star took Doncic off the dribble midway through the second quarter with a filthy crossover that sent the Mavericks guard flying on his back across the hardwood. Brown drilled the jumper in the sequence to the delight of Celtics fans in attendance in Dallas.
“Just being aggressive, that’s all it was,” Brown said of the play. “It’s basketball, you get in-between the lines, a lot of stuff happens. Credit to him for attempting to play some sort of defense but it was just me being aggressive. You can be on the other side of that at any point so just a good play.”
While Brown tried to be diplomatic about the sequence in deference to Doncic, the Mavericks Jumbotron operator surprisingly elected to give the Dallas crowd a second look at the sequence on the Jumbotron. The replay being shown earned an angry reaction from multiple members of the Mavericks bench including Markieff Morris and Tim Hardaway Jr. as the duo wondered why a negative play for Doncic was being shown while the Mavericks were at home.
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Brown was stunned that the play was shown again when asked about it after the game.
“I didn’t notice that,” Brown admitted. “That’s crazy. Somebody needs to get fired if they did that.”
To his credit, Doncic was a good sport about the sequence, crediting Brown for the execution after the loss.
“I can’t lie — that was really nice,” Doncic told reporters. “I was on the floor praying he didn’t make it, but he made it. I tried to do my best. So it’s a whole highlight.”
Doncic finished with a triple-double but only shot 12-of-30 from the field as he spent much of the night having to guard a strong Celtics scorer such as Brown and that effort appeared to wear him out.
“Just putting pressure on them, I think it makes them tired,” Brown said. “There’s two sides of the ball, so being able to apply pressure on both, you gotta be at a certain level of shape to do that. You want to put an emphasis on attacking and being aggressive on both sides of the ball.”
Brown finished the game with 34 points in the Celtics’ 119-110 win. Doncic will get a chance for some revenge against Brown and the Celtics back in Boston on March 1st.
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