Jaylen Brown thoroughly enjoyed burning the Warriors’ defensive game plan 

Jaylen Brown had never seen anything like it before. To begin Sunday’s nationally-televised match-up against the Warriors, he was left wide-open nearly every possession.

Midway through the first quarter, the Celtics called a timeout, and immediately, his teammates swarmed him. They only had one message: keep shooting. Every single time.

So, he did. Brown hit three consecutive three-pointers in a 40-second span, and finished with 19 points in the first period – the most he’s had in any first quarter this season.

“We were really grateful for that,” Joe Mazzulla said of the Warriors game plan. “Teams are going to guard us in different ways. We just got to stay open-minded to what gives us the best chance to win. There’s a game plan, but then when the game starts, the game will tell us what we need to do.”

Brown said after the game he thought the decision to sag off him was a little disrespectful, but not one that he took personally.

“I’m sure they thought that’s what their best chance was, whoever came up with that defensive concept,” Brown said. “So, it’s not personal. It was a little disrespectful to me, but it is what it is. I came out and I do what I do best.”

Turns out the game plan was a last-minute decision — at least that’s what Draymond Green told reporters after the game: “I don’t think we really played a full defensive strategy to kind of dive into that. We implemented our strategy 15 minutes before we left the locker room.”

The Celtics came away with a dominant 140-88 win, and Brown finished with 29 points on 11-19 shooting in just over 22 minutes.

“It didn’t work. Oh well, we move on,” Green said. “It’s okay. I thought it was fun, trying. I was actually all for it – let’s try it, see if it works. If it don’t, oh well. But if it does, we found something.”

But the Warriors did not find a reliable game plan. Instead, Brown hit five first-quarter three-pointers, a mark that only Ray Allen has achieved as a Celtic. Brown’s now hit that figure three times in his career, per NBC Sport Boston’s Dick Lipe.

“You try different things, you got to pick your match-ups,” Steve Kerr said after. “We wanted Draymond to be able to help on drives and make sure that we weren’t giving up easy stuff in the paint.”

Steph Curry finished with 4 points and shot 0-9 from downtown. He told CLNS Media afterwards that the defensive plan was an attempt to throw off a Celtics team that had won ten straight.

“A team that has that many threats, you try to find some weak spot to see if it’ll throw them off a little bit,” Curry said. “Obviously, it didn’t work.”

Derrick White, like the rest of the team, seemed surprised when asked about the defensive scheme.

“JB’s probably never been guarded like that in his life, and just tried to kind of mess with him, kick us out a little bit,” White said. “We had that timeout, and he just came out and made them pay for it, so credit to JB for sure.”

Al Horford and the rest of the Celtics made sure to communicate to Brown he had the green light.

“My teammates empowered me – they were like, ‘we don’t care if you shoot every shot down’,” Brown said. “On this team, it’s about making the right plays, letting guys feel involved, and I feel like I’ve been doing that all season long, and Imma keep doing that. But, don’t get it twisted.”

Mazzulla echoed that sentiment: “I just kept saying ‘thank you,’ and kept empowering Jaylen. Credit to his teammates for empowering him to continue to play.”

In turn, the Celtics had one of their most dominant wins of the season. They entered halftime leading by 44 — the largest halftime lead in franchise history.

It wasn’t just Jaylen Brown either. Jayson Tatum finished the night with 27 points, 20 of which came in the second quarter. White added 14 points and 8 assists, Payton Pritchard exploded for 19 off the bench, and the Celtics put together an all-around masterpiece on both ends of the floor.

But the story of the night remained the perplexing decision to sag off of Brown, who shared after the game he’d be more than glad to see other teams adopt that defensive philosophy.

Brown said he was surprised, and that he’d never been guarded like that before. A 35.2% three-point shooter this season, he’s had a handful of tough nights from the perimeter but has otherwise been pretty consistent. He said after the game that his mindset is generally to get to the paint and open things up for everyone else.

“But if you want to dare me to shoot, we can do that too. I thought it was a little disrespectful, but we took advantage of it, and we didn’t look back.”