Winning 140-99 is enough to make any fanbase celebrate, and the Boston Celtics should be in a celebratory mood. It was against Giannis and the Bucks. Giannis had 24 points, and both Khris Middleton and Bobby Portis played but didn’t register much on the stat sheet. Meanwhile, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, and their friends had a much better night in Milwaukee. Tatum had 40, while Brown had 30.
But it’s what Brown said after the game that’s sure to have Celtics fans not only happy but remorseful about even thinking of trading Brown in any sort of package for Kevin Durant, who is currently tanning with the Suns.
"“I think we’ve been pretty consistent all year long for the most part,” Brown said. “I think we probably should be closer to 60 wins at this point, but I think we’re a better team than we were last year. We’ve won more games than we did last year, and overall we haven’t dropped the ball. We might have lost some games, but we didn’t let a bad game turn into a bad two weeks or a bad month. We’ve been able to pretty much bounce back. We’ve been pretty consistent all year. You would think we haven’t been, but all we got to do is just continue to play basketball, take care of details, hone in and try to reach our full potential. It’s never too late for stuff like that, and tonight was a great win.”"
That says something. A team better than it was last season? A team that got to the NBA Finals somehow got better and could actually finish the job as opposed to walking off the court to a chorus of booing and crying fans after losing the Finals? What a novel concept.
Seriously, and from the outskirts, that means no excuses, but on a more positive note, just looking at this game alone shows that there is a good chance Boston might be the true king of the Eastern Conference as opposed to squads like Milwaukee, Philadelphia, etc.
The Boston Celtics look like they might be finally peaking at the right time.
Right now, Boston still trails the Bucks in the standings, holding down the No. 2 seed. But if what Jaylen Brown believes is true actually is true, there is a chance that when all is said and done, Beantown will have home-court advantage throughout the playoffs. That would be massive.
That said, it means there are no excuses unless, of course, a catastrophic injury occurs, and we don’t wish that upon anyone. But given how the West is a mess, there is a small chance the heavily-favored Lakers (mainly because of LeBron) could somehow somehow come out of the West over teams like the Kings, Nuggets, Grizzlies, and Suns and possibly win it all.
But Boston has other plans on their mind. They will play anyone. Whether or not they show up as they did against Milwaukee depends. The win over the Bucks was great, and if it was any indication of how the future looks, this summer might not have a gloomy ending this year as it did last year. Only time will tell if such fortune occurs.