Jaylen Brown, Celtics will relish opportunity to silence insufferable Knicks fans

Boston Celtics fans, and Jaylen Brown, won’t have to wait long for the chance to get some revenge on the New York Knicks. The two teams will play their first matchup of the season on Friday night at Madison Square Garden. Of course, New York ended Boston’s season much earlier than expected back in the spring, when they eliminated the Cs in the second round of the playoffs.

I’m sure the series was as gutwrenching for Brown as it was for Celtics fans. Boston had owned New York throughout the entire regular season. Four games, four wins, only one of which was within single digits.

To this day, the result is shocking. Back-to-back blown 20-point leads are the stuff of nightmares. To be honest, it was like a jumpscare when I got to the episode of Netflix’s Starting 5 docuseries where the show follows Brown through the playoffs. I literally turned the TV off and went to bed in the middle of the episode.

It was pretty interesting to hear Brown share his perspective, though.

Celtics should be ready for the Knicks

By the time they sat him down to discuss the upset, he still hadn’t quite grasped how things had gotten to where they did. Plus, he feels the same way about Knicks fans as most of us in New England do.

“Last year, we were a championship team,” Brown told the cameras. “We won the championship. Duckboats, champagne… this year we gotta listen to insufferable Knicks fans. I don’t know how we lost in general. But... we lost."

Listening to the insufferable Knicks fans made the upset so much worse. The sad, beaten-down fanbase that can’t decide whether it wants to play the underdog or the “storied franchise” card threw championship parades in the streets of Manhattan after all four of New York’s wins over Boston.

Logging onto social media and seeing the videos of the second-round celebrations was disgusting each time.

It was funny to hear Brown actually talk about what it’s like to experience that as a player, because most won’t. Granted, he was in a different environment than the traditional press conference, but players usually just say something along the lines of, “great fans, great team, going to be a tough matchup.”

Things between the two teams should be a bit different this season, with the Celtics having lost so many key pieces over the summer. Meanwhile, the Knicks went and added some depth to strengthen their bench, plugging a major hole from last year.

To be honest, anything less than a championship from them should be considered a complete and utter failure. It’ll be a true indictment on the careers of stars Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns if they can’t win the big one this year. It just will.

On a more serious note, Brown and his Celtics teammates were greeted by a ghost of playoffs past at Monday’s practice -- former Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau. Thibs was in town just taking in some hoops, as he’s been doing all over the league this preseason.

According to JB, the former Celtics assistant (way back in the day) even broke down some film, highlighting different things he and the Knicks exploited back in the spring. It was an experience as the 10th-year wing described as humbling.

"I took a lot," he explained. "Being able to talk to him and ask questions about what he was seeing. He was breaking down some film and stuff like that, talking to Joe [Mazzulla] from a team perspective and from, like, from a top-down perspective, like, what they wanted to do with me and Jayson [Tatum], or what he wanted to do when the ball was in my hands. It allows you to grow. If you're humble enough to listen, it'll allow you to grow."

Brown and the Celtics will relish the opportunity to silence the insufferable on Friday night at MSG. Hopefully, they’re able to walk away with their first win of the season.