Jaylen Brown, All-NBA? Probably not, but the Celtics are lucky to be better than ever

BOSTON — The additional accolades to round out his game this season were not forthcoming. not yet. Maybe they never will.

Jaylen Brown is still better than ever. He announced this earlier this season. He’s shown it ever since.

As proof, start with the Celtics’ confidence in him Thursday night. Don’t just watch Brown’s buckets, though, as he scored plenty of them while leading his team with 40 points. Dig deeper than that. Find out how dominant he was in Boston’s 126-110 Game 2 win over the Indiana Pacers to take a 2-0 lead in the Eastern Conference Finals series. Notice how smart he is at attacking the Pacers’ smaller guards and wings. Notice how once Brown started rolling, Boston ran ball after ball through him.

“It’s almost impossible to guard him when it’s like that,” teammate Derrick White said. It was unreal. He scored 40 points, but he kept making the right reads and making the right plays. He just had the poise and patience to get into his positions.

A day after learning he wouldn’t make any NBA teams, Brown scored 24 points in the first half. He finished the game with a plus-18. He mercilessly tore down the Pacers’ defense of himself and others, showing off the extra layers of awareness he added to his game. The Celtics trailed by two points entering the second quarter, but the Browns dominated the game and opened the period with a 17-0 run.

In the locker room afterward, several of Brown’s teammates brought up his All-NBA snub on their own. White said voters may have spent too much time focusing on the numbers while ignoring the extent of Brown’s impact on the best team in the league.

“I don’t know what they missed, but Jaylen Brown is one of the top 15 players in this game,” White said. “Throughout the whole season, on both sides, he’s done so much for us to help us win games, and that’s the meaning of the game. It’s a shame.”

The debate about the NBA can continue. With the Celtics six wins away from a championship, that shouldn’t be the most important focus for anyone on the team. That certainly doesn’t seem to be Brown’s focus.

“We’re two games away from the NBA Finals,” Brown said. “Honestly, I don’t have enough time to express…”

However, Brown seemed frustrated that other players were getting more adulation. If he’s upset, that’s normal. He made it to the All-NBA Second Team last season, then left even after improving dramatically in the areas that mattered the most. He locked in on defense. He has developed his basketball IQ. He has committed to doing whatever it takes to win games even with his scoring average down. But she backed down. Maybe it cost him the vote in the NBA this time?

“I watch players get praised and anointed, and I feel like they’re half as talented as I am on both sides of the ball,” Brown said. “But at this point in my life, I’m just accepting it. It’s about being who I am and what I stand for, and I’m not really changing that. I just came out grateful to get down to the floor every night, put my best foot forward and get better every year. Whether people appreciate that Or not, that is it.”

This playoff run should earn Brown more credit. Through the Celtics’ first 12 games of the postseason, he averaged 24.8 points and 6.5 rebounds per game while shooting 54.4 percent from the field. During the second round, He said He thought no one on the Cavaliers could guard him. Through the first two games of the Eastern Conference Finals, he played like no player on the Pacers could either.

Brown looks as caged as ever. Even after saving the Celtics in the opening game of the Eastern Conference Finals, he sounded sullen. Brown didn’t seem excited about his 3-pointer, the most memorable bucket of Boston’s playoff run thus far, as he appeared frustrated with why he needed to make such a big shot. He thought the Celtics should have played better. He thought their defense was not up to the usual level. His team still won, but that wasn’t good enough for Brown. It bothered him that the Celtics left themselves vulnerable.

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Deep into the playoffs once again, Brown wants to leave no doubt this time. Based on the urgency he’s expressed since the start of the season, he’s tired of falling short. He’s determined to prove the Celtics are ready now. If so, he should know that it would be largely because of that he ready now. He’s a more complete player even if the All-NBA voting doesn’t reflect that.

“The main thing about JB is he gets a lot better every year,” White said. “He reads the game better. I think maybe before he became a speedster and he wasn’t really reading it, but now you can’t really speed him up. And he’s making the right reads over and over again. That’s a big time for us. It’s definitely a disdain for the whole NBA.”

Former Celtic Marcus Smart used to joke about Brown driving to the basket like a headless chicken. Now, Brown is playing the game on his terms.

“He has an innate ability to get better, work hard, be motivated, and has unreal confidence, but he’s also not afraid to work on things he knows he has to get better at,” coach Joe Mazzola said. “So you see him every day at shooting or practice, he’s there with six or seven coaches working on every possession, every distance imaginable so he can see his reads. He just pays attention to the right things.”

The Celtics have been committed to putting individual agendas aside all season. However, if there was a right way to respond to the rejection of all NBA players, Mazzola believes Brown would find it.

“Jaylen is just one of my favorite people,” Mazzola said. “How does he deal with it? I think he cares about it in a way that motivates him, and I think he doesn’t care about it at all because he realizes that winning is the most important thing.

(Photo: Maddy Meyer/Getty Images)