We all got to witness a new installment of the Jaylen Brown/Giannis Antetokoumpo rivalry on Friday night. Early in the second half of the Boston Celtics’ 111-105 win over the Milwaukee Bucks, Brown took Antetokounmpo right to the bucket, hit him with a “too small” celebration, and then took an elbow to the face.
The two began to go back and forth as they made their way up the floor before JB was eventually assessed a technical foul. This exchange couldn’t have come at a more opportune time for the Cs. They had just wrapped up a second quarter where they’d shot 0-12 from beyond the arc and had carried those offensive struggles over into the second half.
And then for the next 22-or-so minutes, Boston outscored Milwaukee by 10 en route to an impressive victory. It was a night where their typical high-powered offense wasn’t the driving force behind the Cs’ success. They only sank 32% of their 53 long-range attempts, a staple of their typical game plan.
Instead, they leaned into the physicality and brought an incredible effort on the defensive side of the ball right from the opening tip. Brown set the tone early, when he nearly forced an eight-second violation against Damian Lillard. Dame made it over half-court, but stumbled and lost the ball.
That intensity took on an extra edge after the Brown/Antetokounmpo exchange.
“Yeah, just that right there, just using, whether it’s our opponents, using the refs, using the fans, using people near you, to just manipulate that,” said Joe Mazzulla of manipulating different aspects of the game to gain an advantage. “So, I thought that was great. I thought the elbow to the face kind of unlocked Jaylen a little bit. I thought the technical was tremendous by Jaylen. And I thought from there on out, it just brought out an edge in us, and we were able to feed off that. So just thankful for, you know, for all those things that kind of, you know, brought the edge out of us.”
Friday wasn’t the first time this season we’ve seen the Celtics gain an edge after a moment like this. Just last month, Brown and Antetokounmpo had a similar flash of physical play. Giannis caught JB with an elbow while trying to score out of the post, then seconds later jokingly (maybe not jokingly?) faked a handshake before pulling his hand away from the Finals MVP.
After Boston finalized the win, Brown told the media that he was just focused on getting the win and that the Greek Freak was a child.
Fast forward to later that week, and Nike, a sponsor of Antetokounmpo, seemingly subtweeted Brown, who had had his own back-and-forth with the swoosh over the summer, after a 59-point game from the Bucks star.
It’s unlikely that Giannis would’ve had anything to do with that, but it certainly adds to the lore, doesn’t it?
Now that the Cs have swept the season series 3-0 with the Bucks, it seems like Jaylen is the one with the last laugh anyway.
