Jaylen Brown reminded folks Wednesday night why he was MVP of the NBA Finals last year.
With fellow All-Star Jayson Tatum on the bench in a playoff game for the first time in his career, Brown had 36 points, 10 rebounds and 5 assists in the Boston Celtics’ 109-100 victory over the Orlando Magic at TD Garden. The defending NBA champs now have a 2-0 series lead.
“Fantastic performance tonight by Jaylen Brown,” TNT analyst Grant Hill said. “Talk about stepping up.”
Brown, who played the 2015-16 season for Cal before becoming the third pick of the NBA draft by the Celtics, missed the final three regular season games with a bone bruise in his right knee before returning to score 16 points in Game 1 of this playoff series.
Tatum was declared out for this game a day earlier, the first time the Celtics have played a postseason game without him since 2017. So Boston needed a big night from Brown.
“Obviously, JT is the offensive leader, and we play off of him,” Brown said. “But any given night I can rise to the occasion.”
Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said Brown assured him he was ready to take up the slack.
“At the end of the day, he’s willing to do whatever it takes for us to win,” Mazzulla said. “He didn’t come in saying he had to get 36 and 10. He came in and said, ‘I’m going to do whatever it takes to win.’
“That’s what he told me yesterday, and that’s just the mindset that he has. Regardless of if it’s going well for him or not, he can take it to another level. He did that for us, and I thought the guys kind of fed off of that.”
Game 3 of the series is Friday at Orlando.
Brown shot 12 for 19 from the field, 5 for 7 on 3’s and made 7 of his 8 free throws. He scored 23 second-half points, including seven points in the final 4 minutes. His 3-pointer with 1:26 left gave Boston a 105-94 lead.
“They couldn’t stop him. And we needed it tonight,” Celtics guard Payton Pritchard said.
Brown was low key about his performance. “For me, getting my jumper open, I think kind of opened some stuff up,” he said. “It came down to making plays for my team.”
“He did exactly what he was supposed to tonight,” Shaquille O’Neal said on TNT’s “Inside the NBA.”
Brown delivered his 14th career playoff game of at least 30 points — sixth-most in franchise history — and had his highest-scoring outing of this season since a 37-point performance in a loss to Atlanta back on Nov. 12. It was just the second 30 and 10 postseason game of his career.
Brown credited Orlando with being a good team, physical and tough defensively. “So we do get up for that challenge, but we’ve just got to stay in the fight,” he said, lookin ahead to Game 3. “And on the road, it’s going to be even more of a test. We did enough, but there’s definitely a lot of room for improvement.
“Every game has its own story. This game was one, last game was another story, and the next one’s going to be something else. We’ve just got to be the ones telling that story rather than the ones watching it or listening to it.”
MOST CAREER POSTSEASON POINTS BY EX-CAL PLAYERS
Jaylen Brown 2,417 points
Jason Kidd 2,043 points
Kevin Johnson 2,026 points
Phil Chenier 1,088 points
Charles Johnson 722 points
Darrell Imhoff 354 points
Ryan Anderson 264 points
Leon Powe, 138 points
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