Brown: “No response” to Kidd’s claim that he’s the greatest Celtic.
BOSTON — Dallas Mavericks coach Jason Kidd attempted to throw a stick of dynamite into the middle of the Celtics locker room by declaring — twice — that Jaylen Brown is Boston’s best player Saturday afternoon. But when Brown and Jayson Tatum were separately asked about it a short time later, ahead of Boston attempting to take a 2-0 lead in the NBA Finals when Game 2 tips off Sunday night, both made it clear they had no interest in letting Kidd’s mind games have an impact on them.
“I don’t have no reaction,” Brown said.
“This is a team sport,” Tatum said. “We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have JB on our team, and we can say that for a lot of guys, right. We have all played a part in getting to where we’re at, and we understand that people try to drive a wedge between us. I guess it’s a smart thing to do or try to do.
“We’ve been in this position for many of years of guys trying to divide us and say that one of us should be traded or one is better than the other. So it’s not our first time at the rodeo.”
It also isn’t Kidd’s, who has been a constant presence in the NBA since being drafted by the Mavericks 30 years ago, appeared in three Finals as a player – including winning the 2011 title with Dallas – and is now in his first as an NBA head coach. But as he was asked a fairly innocuous question about Brown to end his press conference, with the query being what makes guarding someone like him so challenging, Kidd took it as an opportunity to stir up some drama after the Celtics throttled his Mavericks in Game 1 Thursday night.
“Well, Jaylen is their best player,” Kidd said with a sly smile. “Just looking at what he does defensively. He picked up Luka full court. He got to the free throw line. He did everything, and that’s what your best player does.
“Just understanding he plays both sides, defense and offense, at a high rate. And he’s been doing that the whole playoffs. I mean, when you talk about the Eastern Conference MVP, and it seems like he has continued to pick up where he left off.”
The topic of whether Brown or Tatum is the better player has been a driver of sports talk radio and debate around here for years now, as the two star forwards have led Boston deep into the playoffs over and over again since being drafted third overall in 2016 and ’17, respectively.
This year marked the sixth time in eight years that Boston has made the Eastern Conference finals, and the second time in three they’ve reached the league’s championship round, with Tatum winning ECF MVP honors two years ago, and Brown claiming the award after Boston’s four-game sweep of the Indiana Pacers last month, beating Tatum out by a narrow 5-4 vote.
But after all of the ups-and-downs Boston has been through as a team over their shared time together – the Celtics have played more playoff games without winning a title over the last eight years than any team in NBA history over an eight-year span – neither Brown nor Tatum showed any interest in even acknowledging Kidd’s attempt to cause controversy between them, or within the Celtics.
