Jaylen Brown just sent loud reminder to increasingly important audience

Jaylen Brown might not win the NBA's Most Valuable Player award this season, but his case deserves more respect than it's been getting. When the Boston Celtics have called his name, he's answered the best he can. He did it again in what may have been the Celtics' biggest win of the season.

In their epic matchup against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Brown not only led the Celtics to victory, but he went toe-to-toe with the league's reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who, lest we forget, may very well be the frontrunner to win it this season.

It's not like SGA had an off-night - 33 points, eight assists, 10-for-12 shooting - but the Celtics don't win if Brown didn't throw punches right back at him in the Thunder. Brown's statline showed he was up for the challenge - 31 points, eight assists, eight rebounds - which is in character for him, sure.

However, Brown played so well that he even managed to give Gilgeous-Alexander a taste of his own medicine as Boston began to pull away.

This was the biggest win of the season, beating a fully healthy Thunder team with Jayson Tatum still recovering and Nikola Vucevic on the shelf, which shows Boston ain't no paper tiger. This is exactly what Boston needs to see after such a frustrating loss to the Timberwolves, with the playoffs around the corner.

It also shows that Brown's MVP case is more credible than everyone realizes

Brown recently got a pretty big endorsement for MVP from some of the biggest names in sportswriting the other day. Something that was not received well once it went viral, but his performance against the reigning champions show that the argument for MVP is much better than many think.

It's not like Boston won only because of him, but not many teams can say they got Gilgeous-Alexander's best shot and still survived. The Celtics can because of Brown, and even more than that, they can say they did it with an *improving* Tatum but not a fully recovered Tatum.

A player can't do that against someone like SGA and the reigning NBA Champions unless they have proven they are among the NBA's best players, and Brown has. Even before tonight, Boston was in the place they were in because of Brown's performance from start to finish.

The Celtics game against the Thunder was just about the perfect litmus test to see if he could keep this up against a team that wanted such a pivotal game. Because he passed with flying colors, saying Brown deserves to be MVP is no longer a joke.