After reaching the 50-win mark for the third straight season with Monday night’s 121-99 win in Portland, Jaylen Brown was asked by a reporter if he still appreciates hitting the half-century mark year after year. Partway through the question, Jayson Tatum, sitting to Brown's right, burst out laughing.
Why? Because Brown had just finished giving a post-game speech on that exact topic inside the visitor’s locker room at Moda Center – a speech which he gives each season when the Celtics hit the 50-win milestone.
“We just finished talking about that,” Tatum said before Brown could answer, then urged his teammate on the spot, “Give the speech.”
Now it was JB's turn to laugh.
After a moment, Brown composed himself, “For sure. Super grateful. All the guys laugh because at this time of year, I say the same thing: how much of an honor it is to be on a team that’s won [so many games]. I don’t want to take that for granted. So I’m gonna keep saying it till I’m blue in the face, man: I’m grateful to be on a team that’s winning, to be on a team that’s playing the right way, has another opportunity to do something special.”
The manner in which this Celtics team reached 50 was special in many ways.
For one, they became the first team this season to hit the mark, taking them only 64 games to do so. Only six other teams in franchise history have reached 50 wins at such a pace, and four of those teams – most recently the 2007-08 squad – went on to win the NBA Championship.
The C’s made franchise history during the game itself, posting their best assist-to-turnover ratio of all time with 34 assists to just three turnovers.
The game also featured beautiful shot distribution, as they attempted exactly 100 field goals – 60 inside the arc and 40 outside the arc. They scored 60 points in the paint, 45 points from long range, 35 bench points, 23 fast-break points, and 17 second-chance points. Brown and Tatum were at the forefront of that scoring with 27 and 26 points apice. Meanwhile, Sam Hauser scored a season-high 22 points off the bench.
Then on the defensive end, Boston held the Blazers to fewer than 25 points in each of the last three quarters.
Brown has now won 50 games in five out of his eight seasons, while Tatum has done so in four out of seven. Though, it’s worth noting that two of those non-50-win seasons were shortened by 10 games due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the third was a 49-win season in 2018-19.
Tatum, like his wingmate, said he doesn’t take this type of perennial success for granted.
“We’ve been fortunate enough to be on great teams for 7 years and 8 years now,” he said after playing in what was also his 500th career game. “It’s not like that in every team around the league. Been surrounded by really good players and good guys and good coaches and we just try to get better individually and as a group every single day. We’re not perfect, but we strive toward that and at this point of the season to have 50 wins, we’re doing something right. And the scary part is we can get better.”
This is the best team that either of those guys have been on and for the first time, they have a legitimate shot at 60 wins. They only need to go 10-8 in the final 18 games to reach that mark, which they should be able to do easily.
Even though winning a title is the main goal, Tatum believes that it’s OK to celebrate some of the minor successes along the way.
“We want to win a championship; that’s the ultimate goal,” he said. “But it’s important to acknowledge the small wins through the process of winning 50 games, making the playoffs, getting the top seed. It’s not to take those things for granted because we work extremely hard as a group to achieve that … So it’s alright to pat yourself on the back sometimes as a team, knowing that we’ve got more things to accomplish, but we’re doing a pretty good job so far.”
And when they get this far each year, Tatum and the rest of the team can count on Brown to give his annual speech of gratitude.
"It's been an honor giving that speech every year," said Brown. "For the most part I’ve won every step of my career, and that’s been due to great teammates, a great organization, and trying to build something special."