Jaylen Brown has griped often this season about how he and his Celtics are officiated. His displeasure over certain refereeing decisions has gotten the Boston star ejected from one game and fined $35,000 after another.
Drawing whistles was no problem for him on Monday, however.
Nearly half of the 41 points Brown racked up against the Phoenix Suns came from the charity stripe. He attempted 21 free throws, made 19 and added seven rebounds, six assists, one block and one steal as Boston pulled away late for a 120-112 win at TD Garden.
It was the highest single-game total of free throws and attempts by a Celtics player since Paul Pierce also went 19-for-21 in a 2007 loss to Dallas.
“I wasn’t even thinking about (the officials),” said Brown, who heard “MVP” chats during several of his trips to the line. “I just came out and was aggressive. What I think about when I have the ball is just be aggressive every time you have it, and then live with the results. So I was physical. Maybe (the Suns) didn’t help as much because of our personnel. We’ve got, obviously, (Jayson Tatum) out there, so maybe it’s less of a shift (approach), because you don’t want to leave him open. So they gave me opportunities to play, and I just did what I normally do.”
Tatum and Derrick White each scored 21 points for Boston, with Payton Pritchard adding 19 off the bench. Pritchard also drew a late offensive foul on Suns star Devin Booker to help the Celtics close the game on a 12-1 run.
Booker, who did not play when the Celtics routed the Suns in Phoenix on Feb. 24, nearly matched Brown’s output with 40 points, including 23 straight for his team between the late second and early third quarters. But Phoenix totaled just two points and zero made field goals in the final 4:45 of regulation after taking a four-point lead midway through the fourth quarter.
Brown, who also sat out the teams’ first meeting, scored 18 of the Celtics’ 25 fourth-quarter points, with four of the outliers coming on free throws by Tatum and Pritchard in the final 10 seconds.
“They’re a tough, physical team, and he didn’t play the last time, and so we played a little bit differently in that game,” Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla said of the Suns, who’d won six of eight since their home loss to Boston last month. “And I think this game, his ability to spread the floor, get into the paint, make plays for himself or others, combat their physicality with offensive physicality and drives, I thought he took that challenge on. I thought he was great in it.”
The Celtics fell behind 8-0 during a shaky opening stretch that featured back-to-back White turnovers. Then, they responded with a 12-3 run, with Tatum pulling the strings.
Tatum assisted on Boston’s first two baskets — a cutting and-one layup by Neemias Queta and a White 3-pointer off a Queta steal — then scored the next two, finishing at the rim against Oso Ighodaro and draining a second-chance three.
Though he ceded the spotlight to his longtime co-star later in the night, Tatum was a team-best plus-11 across 32 minutes in his fifth game back from Achilles surgery, finishing with seven rebounds, four assists and a steal.
“It felt good just being out there in a close game at home,” Tatum said. “Just being a part of the atmosphere, being part of winning plays at both ends. Obviously, it’s been a while since I’ve been a part of that. So it felt good to be out there.”
Brown keyed the next Celtics charge by earning a steady succession of trips to the foul line. He shot just 1-for-5 from the field in the first quarter — the lone make coming on a fast-break layup after a Baylor Scheierman steal — but drew five shooting fouls, plus another that was wiped out by a successful Suns challenge.
The Boston star went 9-for-10 from the foul line in the first 12 minutes, setting a new career high for free throws made in any quarter. He was the first NBA player to attempt double-digit free throws in a first quarter since Giannis Antetokounmpo did so on Dec. 4, 2024, and the first Celtic to accomplish that feat since Tony Allen in 2006.
Brown also set up first-half 3-pointers by Scheierman, Luka Garza, Pritchard and Tatum with well-timed passes. Scheierman appeared to tweak his fractured thumb midway through the first quarter — he’s been playing with a splint on the finger since he injured it on Feb. 27 — but he stayed in the game.
Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker (1) goes to the basket defended by Boston Celtics guard Derrick White (9) during the second quarter of the game at TD Garden. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald)
The Celtics’ other remaining 2024 championship starter caught fire to begin the second quarter. White drilled 3-pointers on Boston’s first three possessions of the period, then hit his fifth of the game with two minutes to play in the half. He and Brown — who added two triples during a 3-for-4 second quarter — each had 19 points at halftime.
Boston controlled play for much of the second quarter, but it struggled to keep the clamps on Booker. Phoenix’s five-time All-Star guard scored his team’s final 13 first-half points, drawing two fouls on defensive standout White during that stretch. The Celtics led 65-61 at halftime.
Booker then proceeded to score the Suns’ first 10 points of the second half, including eight in 46 seconds. By the end of that flurry, White and Sam Hauser both were in foul trouble (four apiece) — but the Suns were no closer to catching the Celtics.
Tatum and Brown combined to score 11 points in the first three minutes of the second half, all on layups, dunks or shots within seven feet of the basket. Another layup by Hauser stretched Boston’s lead back to nine, 78-69.
The Suns climbed closer later in the third, twice getting to within three on a Grayson Allen step-through layup and yet another Booker bucket. But Pritchard responded to both with 3-pointers, and the Celtics took a 91-86 edge into the fourth quarter.
The lead reached 10 after Pritchard canned two more threes early in the fourth. The Celtics then had to contend with a surprise scoring surge from Haywood Highsmith, a 29-year-old journeyman who was waived by Brooklyn last month. Highsmith hit two fourth-quarter 3-pointers and drew two fouls, including one that put White one whistle away from expulsion with 6:02 remaining.
Highsmith also forced consecutive Brown turnovers on the defensive end. Ighodaro followed up the second with a dunk that put Phoenix ahead 105-104. Another Suns bench player, Jordan Goodwin, pressured Tatum into a giveaway and hit a corner three to make it 110-106.
Brown missed a 3-pointer that would have pulled the Celtics even, but he poked the ball away from Booker on the ensuing possession and dropped a pass to Tatum for a fast-break layup.
“It felt like old times,” Tatum said.
After a Suns timeout, a Highsmith miss in traffic and an off-the-mark layup attempt by Tatum, Brown soared in for a putback that put Boston back in front, 112-111, with 2:30 to go. He scored on the next two Celtics possessions, as well, and stingy defense by Pritchard and others helped silence the Suns’ offense. The offensive foul by Booker against Pritchard, which followed a Phoenix shot-clock violation, was the former’s seventh turnover of the game.
“I think they are one of the toughest teams in the league,” Mazzulla reiterated. “I think they bring the best out of you. I thought we said that, and again, it was good for us to earn that. We had to earn the win, and we had to earn it through our defensive playmaking. We had to earn it through our offensive execution. So that’s something that we have to continue to get better at. But we knew it was going to be a tough challenge, and it’s a credit to our guys. I thought they answered the call to the challenge.”
The Celtics, who will close out a three-game homestand Wednesday against the Golden State Warriors (7 p.m.), improved to 45-23 with the win, strengthening their grip on the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference. They’re 4-0 in games Tatum and Brown have started and finished, their only loss with both active coming after Brown was ejected last Tuesday in San Antonio.
“I think JT is extremely important to us for what we want to do,” Brown said. “Obviously, I’m having a great season, but then I have to just think, what’s the big picture? And sometimes that’s not easy, but I always put the team first and what the bigger picture is first. …
“It’s been OK. We’ve found ways to win, and we’ve just got to continue to do that. We got some games left. It’s not going to be perfect. I think we could have won in a better (fashion) tonight against the Suns, but it’s going to take a little bit of that growth factor by the time we get to the playoffs. So I’ve got to be patient. Everybody’s got to be patient. This is not the best version that you are watching right now. So we just take it one day at a time.”