Jaylen Brown leads way in Pelicans triumph: Examining Brown’s remarkable third quarter

“We’ve got a juggernaut in JT, but we’ve got another one in JB,” Malcolm Brogdon said during the post-game scrum after another thorough Boston Celtics win. Those words from Brogdon sum up what was a memorable Wednesday night on Legends Way from the C’s superstar guard.

On the first night of Boston’s fifth back-to-back of the current campaign, Jaylen Brown pieced together his first 40-point outing of the season. The former California guard shot over 70% for the second time in two months and turned the ball over just two times in his 35 minutes in the game. With the Cs up just six at the intermission, Boston needed a spark to pull away from a stubborn Pelicans squad that had figured out how to win games without two of its top three players.

Brown came out of the locker room on a mission, putting the Boston Celtics offense on his back, scoring 18 points to provide the Cs with a stable 12-point advantage heading into the final 12 minutes on the parquet. It was just the fifth time this season that Brown had managed to score 18 or more in a single quarter. Right off the bat, Brown took the rookie, Dyson Daniels into the post, muscling him into the paint before knocking down his patented fadeaway jump shot.

In third quarters this season, New Orleans has averaged the second most steals in the association, so it was imperative to take care of the basketball. Brown demonstrated the evolution of his game, and all the work he put in during the offseason to help his team pull away from one of the Western Conference’s best ahead of a critical matchup against the team lurking behind them in the Eastern Conference.

He may rank just 18th in the NBA currently in third-quarter scoring, but last season in the month of January, Brown ranked fourth in the entire league in total points scored in the third period of play, scoring just over 48% from behind the arc. New Orleans continued to cut the lead at the beginning of the quarter, but once the Cs had an eight-point advantage over their visitors, it was time for Brown to assert his dominance offensively.

Brown went on a 6-2 run himself, knocking down another tough fadeaway, and using his strength to get the bucket and the foul. In both of those instances, New Orleans chose to keep an inexperienced Daniels on one of Boston’s biggest shot-making threats inside the arc and were punished big time for it. It was the second time in the quarter that Brown took it to the rookie on the left side of the painted area.

The first time Brown used his right hand to force his way into the paint before taking his routine jump shot. After back-to-back turnaround jumpers, the Georgia native drove with his left-hand baseline before going up through contact and finishing right above the rim. Left hand, right hand, it did not matter. Wherever he wanted to go, Brown went, showing off his strength that has brought his field goal percentage inside the arc to 63.5%. That is higher than what he was able to produce in the last three seasons in that area.

Just 15 seconds later, Brown drilled his third consecutive mid-range jump shot in the quarter. An unlost art of today’s game has become Brown’s bread and butter when he is in the zone. If the quarter could not get better for Brown, he netted a straightaway 30-footer right in front of New Orleans’ best defenders, Naji Marshall. Offensively, Brown put on a complete show for the crowd in the third quarter, using his creative shot-making abilities to guide the Boston Celtics to a comfortable lead.

The muscle and pure strength of Brown were evident during those 12 minutes. As just the sixth player in the league this season to shoot over 47% from the 15-19 foot range, Brown showed off his profound mid-range game that has become one of the association’s most lethal so far this season.

When Brown is aggressive and confident on the offensive end, there are very few answers the opposition can respond with, and in that third quarter, there was nothing Willie Green could do to stop a man from showing the world what he can do.