The Boston Celtics went down to the wire against the Milwaukee Bucks on Friday night in one of the most entertaining games of the season. Both sides were going back and forth all night, but in the end, the Celtics pulled out a victory, completing a 3-0 season sweep of the Bucks.
This game had everything. Three-point lulls, huge buckets in the fourth, and everything in between. It even had some chippiness. Early in the third quarter, Jaylen Brown took Giannis Antetokounmpo to the rack and finished over him. Brown gave him a too-small gesture, and Antetokounmpo chicken-winged him in response.
As Brown was running back down the court, he was talking trash to Antetokounmpo and responding to the elbow. The Celtics star earned a technical foul, but Joe Mazzulla loved it.
Joe Mazzulla loved Jaylen Brown's tech
After the game, he talked about how great the tech was for the moment.
“Just that right there. Whether it's our opponents, using the refs, using the fans, using people near you to just manipulate that,” Mazzulla said. “So, I thought that was great.
“I thought the elbow to the face kind of unlocked Jaylen a little bit, I thought the technical was tremendous by Jalyen, and I thought from there on in, it just brought out an edge in us, and we were able to feed off that. So, just thankful for all those things that kind of brought the edge out of us.”
Jaylen Brown received a technical foul for taunting Giannis on this play. pic.twitter.com/xaKiiCq5ph
— ESPN (@espn) December 7, 2024
Mazzulla is a big proponent of manipulating environments in any way possible. This time around, it came in the form of an altercation between Brown and Antetokounmpo.
At the time, the Bucks were up four, and Damian Lillard put them up by five when he sunk the technical free throw. From that point on, the Celtics outscored the Bucks 56-45 to win the game by six.
Milwaukee played a very physical brand of basketball, but the Celtics matched it. They didn’t back down from the way the Bucks were treating the game, instead choosing to up their own intensity and fight even harder.
Getting a technical foul gives away an opportunity to earn a point, but the reward (in this case) was much greater. It manipulated the environment, just like Mazzulla wanted his team to do.
The Celtics head coach has never been one to criticize his players for getting emotional on the court, especially not when it gets the team fired up. That’s exactly what happened on Friday night, and the fans should love that mentality.
It breeds entertaining basketball.