Jaylen Brown sums up Pacers' play in Game 3 with hilarious quote
Jaylen Brown sums up Pacers' play in Game 3 with hilarious quote originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
The Boston Celtics mounted an incredible comeback Saturday night at Gainbridge Fieldhouse to steal Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals and take a 3-0 series lead over the Indiana Pacers.
But you might be wondering how they found themselves down 18 points to a Pacers team missing its star player, Tyrese Haliburton, due to injury. Were the Celtics off their game early in the contest, or were the Pacers simply on theirs?
Celtics star Jaylen Brown believes it was the latter, and found a colorful way to convey that message after Boston's thrilling 114-111 victory.
"I think Indiana played well,” Brown said. "I mean, we could say that we didn’t play as well tonight, but I feel like they just -- you had to be out there to kind of feel them, they were just flying around.
"Then they were shooting the ball well; some of those guys turned into f---ing Michael Jordan or whatever. We were like, “What is going on?’ We couldn’t figure it out.'"
We wouldn't go so far as to compare Andrew Nembhard and T.J. McConnell to His Airness, but Indy's guard duo played incredibly well in Haliburton's absence; Nembhard scored a career-high 32 points on 12 of 21 shooting, while McConnell racked up 23 points on 10 of 17 shooting with nine rebounds and six assists.
The Pacers shot a blistering 63.6 percent as a team in the first half, hitting nearly 70 percent of their 2-point shots (25 of 36) to race out to a double-digit lead.
The Celtics stayed the course, however, and surged back with a huge fourth quarter in which they outscored Indy by 12 points. A highlight in the comeback was Jayson Tatum's behind-the-back pass to Al Horford for the 37-year-old's history-making seventh 3-pointer of the game.
"We just kept with it, kept saying, 'They’re gonna let us back in the game, they’re gonna let us back in the game,'" Brown added. "We stayed between 12, 13, 14 points, (within) striking distance, and in the fourth quarter, we made some big time plays.
"Jayson Tatum made some big time plays -- that pass behind the back to the corner to Al, hang it in the f---ing Louvre. Like, it was crazy. We just had a great grit win tonight.”
The Celtics are clearly the more talented team in this series, especially with Haliburton sidelined for Indy. But they still deserve a ton of credit for surviving an early scoring barrage in a building where the Pacers hadn't lost since March 18 and emerging with the victory.
The Celtics have a chance to close out the series in Game 4 on Monday night, with tip-off set for 8 p.m. ET and NBC Sports Boston's coverage beginning at 7 p.m. ET with Celtics Pregame Live.
