There was a significant pause from Jaylen Brown before he answered a question regarding his bothersome hamstring after Game 1.
“I’m fine,” he said once he gathered himself after being asked if he was at all apprehensive in Game 1 because of the nagging injury. “We just got to come out, play basketball and leave it all out on the floor. Can’t be any apprehension. Can’t be any … anything. Just leave it all out there.
“I’m prepared to do that, whatever that means. Just be ready for the next one. That’s it.”
That hamstring would explain Brown’s abysmal shooting performance in Game 1. But Brown is right, he can’t help the Celtics if he’s playing tentatively. With Khris Middleton sidelined, Brown is in position to be the x-factor in this series while Jayson Tatum and Giannis Antetokounmpo should come close to canceling one another out from a scoring standpoint.
But while Antetokounmpo only outscored Tatum by three points and had a subpar shooting performance himself (9-for-25) on Sunday, Boston’s star forward didn’t exactly answer the call in Game 1. Tatum and Brown went a combined 10-for-31 from the floor, which was less efficient than the rest of Boston’s roster, which finished 18-for-53 in Game 1.
“This one should hurt a little bit. We have to learn from it,” Al Horford said. “We’ve been playing good basketball. Obviously, this is a different challenge. But we have an opportunity now to learn from this game, see how we can be better as a group and come out and do that on Tuesday.”
But for Tatum, it goes beyond his 33% shooting performance. Like Marcus Smart and whoever else brought the ball up the floor for Boston, Tatum was often pressured the length of the floor. And things only got tougher in the half court, leading to almost no offensive flow.
“They kind of just sped us up,” Tatum said. “We just got to do a better job of doing what we want to do and not letting them dictate that throughout the course of the game.”
Ime Udoka and others expressed a similar sentiment following the Game 1 loss, so the Celtics are on the same page. While some of the Celtics’ bigs will have to help on screens, this issue is going to come down to Tatum, Brown and Smart, sometimes Derrick White. Boston’s ball-handlers need to find a way to get the ball moving quicker, so they’re not playing with a 15-second shot clock and abandoning their offensive approach.
Tatum and Brown aren’t Boston’s only ball-handlers, but they’re the focal points of the offense. They need to find a way to combat Milwaukee’s defense approach while also being ready for their counter.
And if Boston’s duo truly wants to take that next step as big-time players in the NBA, they’ll come out in full force on Tuesday.