beating James pretty soundly<\/a>, Brown can let us in on what was said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cHe came up to me and he told me in my ear, like, you’re gonna be an all-star one day, you’re gonna be a great player,\u201d Brown said after the win in Los Angeles. \u201cHe also said you\u2019re playing for a great coach. Just keep your head up.\u201d<\/p>\n
That part was tough for Brown, whose minutes were pretty inconsistent back then. The 35-plus minutes he got against James that night were the most he played that season, and one of only four games where he played 30 or more. There were 15 games where he played less than 10.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Times have changed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cJB, is doing, sh–, he’s playing great basketball,\u201d James said after watching Brown dismantle his Lakers. \u201cThis whole MVP thing, I don’t understand why his name is not getting talked about some as well. No one gave them a shot to start the season, and he\u2019s averaging, what? Thirty?\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, 29.2 at this point, but who\u2019s counting?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talked about that at the All-Star game,\u201d Brown said. \u201c\u2018You remember that 10 years ago?\u2019 And he smiles, like, \u2018of course, I’m not surprised at anything you’re doing right now. So just keep proving people wrong. Keep doing what you got to do, and keep leading your team and people take notice.\u201d<\/p>\n
People like Nikola Jokic, whose Nuggets are on the schedule in a couple of days. LeBron James isn\u2019t the only former MVP who was singing Brown\u2019s praises at the All-Star game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe’s playing at a high level, scoring the ball. He’s such a good defensive player, too,\u201d Jokic said. \u201cI think the versatility of him, that he can play on both sides of the court and still score, and still be dominant, and still be top three in the East. He’s a really good player.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown will turn 30 as next season starts, which usually means the beginning of the end of a professional sports career. The first third is from age 20-25 when players are trying to prove themselves and earn massive contracts. The middle third is from 25-30, the prime years when players are at their absolute physical peaks. Turning 30 is when players maybe start to feel the first signs of their sports mortality. That three to start their age does some heavy duty work on a psyche.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Brown might buck that trend some, because he\u2019s on a constant quest for self-improvement. He\u2019s never been one to give in to norms, and he\u2019s always been able to push his body to its limits. This season is as much about Brown figuring out how to push himself to new heights as it is proving people wrong about a \u201cgap year.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he’s the kind of guy that just, he relishes in getting 1% better, whatever that looks like,\u201d Joe Mazzulla said. \u201cAnd he just cares about winning. At the end of the day, he wants to win. So he does a good job assessing. He’s smart. He knows the game, knows the league, knows what wins, knows what doesn’t win.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s winning right now is the Boston Celtics. They’re reaching heights even the most optimistic optimists would have had trouble fathoming over the summer. Brown is one of the engines on that rocket ship. For a guy always looking for something to rail against to find motivation, this win over the Lakers let him bask in a little more praise than usual.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m grateful,\u201d he said. \u201cIt’s an honor to play in Celtics-Lakers rivalries. It\u2019s an honor for LeBron, who’s arguably the best player to ever play the game, giving me some high praise. So I’m just grateful. I wake up every morning, grateful, humbled in the position I’m able to be in, and I come out and put my best foot forward every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The most important thing in sports on November 3, 2016 was the Chicago Cubs celebrating the end of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-493660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}