Jaylen Brown, Celtics absorbed shot in the mouth, then got tougher | Vautour

BOSTON — When he finally stood up after a few moments on the ground, Jaylen Brown put his hand to his split upper lip and saw blood.

With 8:26 left in the second quarter, Sixers guard James Harden drove to the basket and lost control as he elevated to shoot. After losing the ball from his left hand, Harden flailed and pushed Brown with his right in the air.

Harden’s forearm hit Brown’s face moving from his nose down to his mouth and pushed him to the court. Brown tumbled into the padded stanchion and stayed down for a moment with the Celtics trailing 35-27.

It’s been a rough 2023 for Brown’s face. The Celtics guard suffered a facial contusion in February that caused him to wear a protective mask down the stretch. Sunday was just his second consecutive game without it.

After the officials looked at the video, Harden was assessed a flagrant one foul for the beard vs. beard violence. When Brown got up, his lip was bleeding and he looked angry. The Celtics seemed inspired.

“Nothing like a shot to the face to wake you right up,” Brown said after the game. “It sparked the Garden.”

The Celtics, who’d played overcaffeinated early, were suddenly focused. Brown, who put tissue in his left nostril to prevent more bleeding, stepped to the line and made both free throws. On the retained possession, Jayson Tatum hook-lobbed an alley-oop to Robert Williams.

With the Sixers suddenly tentative, Brown picked off a Tyrese Maxey pass and laid it in with 7:58 left as the crowd roared and the Sixers called timeout.

In all, the Celtics scored eight-straight points in the game-changing run that tied the game and set the tone for the rest of the game.

“We were playing so well. Trusting. The ball was moving,” Sixers coach Doc Rivers said sadly after the game. “Then we had three or four turnovers in a row. One was the flagrant. The ball kind of slipped out of his hand. That led to a flagrant. After that, we never played right again.”

After Game 4, the Celtics looked soft. They were too proud of a fruitless comeback that still ended in a loss. After Game 5, they looked done as they fell behind 3-2 with an embarrassing 115-103 loss at home. They did not look like a team who could take a figurative or, as it turned out, literal shot in the mouth and keep moving forward.

Marcus Smart tried to rally his teammates.

“If you’re not willing to bleed, if you’re not willing to break something, willing to tear something, going hard, then you shouldn’t be on that court because that’s what it is,” he said. “That’s what the playoffs are about.”

Smart’s words weren’t some hyperbolic rhetoric. Brown bled and his team and the entire arena rallied around him.

“I called the Garden out last game,” he said. “The energy was through the roof. It was amazing.”

Follow MassLive sports columnist Matt Vautour on Twitter at @MattVautour424.

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