Jaylen Brown was on fire in the first half on Saturday night, but by the time the third quarter came around, he slowed down a bit. On any normal night, the rest of the Boston Celtics could have picked up the pace, but they weren’t able to do that. Instead, Anthony Edwards led the Minnesota Timberwolves to a huge win, coming back from down 12 points.
A monster final shot from Edwards finished the job for the Wolves, but what really led to the Celtics’ collapse was a poor second-half offensive performance. Boston failed to find any sort of rhythm, and everything that worked for them in the first half came up short.
The result was a Celtics loss.
Celtics offense collapsed when Jaylen Brown went cold
Brown was absolutely on fire in the first half against the Wolves, picking apart their defense by carefully selecting his spots to attack on the court.
By the time the second quarter ended, Brown had 27 points, five rebounds, five assists, and three steals while shooting a red-hot 11-of-18 from the floor and 4-of-7 from behind the three-point line.
Unfortunately, when the second half rolled around, that same success wasn’t there for Brown. And even worse for the Celtics, it wasn’t there for the rest of the lineup, either.
In the third quarter, Brown shot just 3-of-8 from the field, including two turnovers. However, 6-of-15 shooting from the rest of the guys, including 1-of-11 shooting from Payton Pritchard, Derrick White, Sam Hauser, and Baylor Scheierman, was pretty brutal, too.
Boston’s entire offensive flow went out the window as Minnesota increased its ball pressure and forced the Celtics into taking bad shots late in the shot clock.
The Timberwolves outscored the Celtics by 12 points in the third quarter, erasing Boston’s 10-point halftime lead in merely 12 minutes. And the fourth quarter wasn’t much better.
Brown bounced back offensively, but Pritchard and White still only shot a combined 3-of-9, and the Wolves got a huge contribution from Edwards.
The Minnesota superstar had 14 fourth-quarter points. He shot 4-of-7 from the field, 2-of-4 from behind the arc, and 4-of-5 from the charity stripe.
After a scorching performance from deep range in the first half, powered by the gravity Brown created with his own heroic scoring, the Celtics tumbled in the second half.
They shot just 7-of-24 from distance, and their inability to generate a consistent offensive flow seriously hurt them. Even when they made a comeback at the end of the game, it was largely due to White and Brown’s tough shot-making.
When Brown went cold, the Celtics fumbled on Saturday. And that’s not a problem they can afford to see repeat itself too often this season.