Well, Monday night's Game 4 featured just about as depressing an outcome as any Boston Celtics fan could have envisioned. The loss to send Boston down 3-1 in the series was far from the worst part. After Jayson Tatum went down with an injury that we now know is a torn Achilles tendon, the Celtics' chances in these playoffs just dropped to near zero. With that said, this near-impossible situation puts Jaylen Brown in a unique set of circumstances. What if he does the unthinkable, and leads this team back from down 3-1 to a series victory?
It sounds like a total pipe dream, obviously. Only a handful of teams in the history of the NBA have ever overcome the deficit the Celtics currently face, with 13 teams having pulled it off. It's hard to say Boston is in a super favorable position to replicate this achievement, given that they're down their best player on top of the other problems they gave faced in these playoffs.
But the Celtics certainly don't have a lack of faith in themselves. Joe Mazzulla knows his team can win three straight with their backs against the wall, and the locker room isn't going to come into Game 5 downcast.
If the Celtics do pull it off, it would undoubtedly be on the back of Jaylen Brown, in Jayson Tatum's absence. Last year's Eastern Conference Finals MVP and NBA Finals MVP knows what he has to do, and he's been in this situation before.
Jaylen Brown can lead a 3-1 Celtics comeback
In fact, let's briefly revisit a scenario from right around this time two years ago. It was the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals, and Boston was matched up with the eighth-seeded Miami Heat. After going down 0-3 in the series, there still wasn't an ounce of panic in the Celtics' locker room.
Fans in Boston remember vividly the words Jaylen Brown had at the time: "Don't let us get one." That became the Celtics' mantra in the second half of that series. As we all know, they won the next three games in a row against the Heat, becoming just the fourth team in NBA history to force a Game 7 after losing the first three games of a series.
All that to say, Brown and the Celtics have beaten incredible odds before, and they can do it again. Should this wild scenario unfold, can you imagine what it would do for Jaylen's overall legacy?
It wouldn't even matter if Boston advanced past the next round or if they won another championship this season. If Jaylen Brown was able to rally the Celtics in these impossible circumstances without his All-NBA teammate, we would need to have some very interesting conversations about where he stands in NBA history.