“We Just Blocked It Out”: Jaylen Brown Reflects on Narratives Around Him and Jayson Tatum

After seven long years together, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have finally achieved the league’s greatest honor, the chance to lift the Larry O’Brien trophy. As the confetti rained down from the rafters at TD Garden, and the city of Boston celebrated its first Championship in more than a decade, the duo of Tatum and Brown finally proved their detractors wrong. The NBA’s most underrated tandem finally delivered a Championship despite the media doubting them for a long time. Therefore, Brown had to call out the haters during the post-game presser.

With the Finals MVP trophy by his side, Jaylen Brown was asked about the media scrutiny surrounding him and Tatum throughout the past few years and how he dealt with it all. The rhetoric of him and JT not being a good fit for a Championship roster was prevalent in NBA circles after the Celtics’ 2022 NBA Finals loss.

Answering the question, Brown said,

“The media have said all different types of things: We can’t play together, we are never going to win. We heard it all. But we just blocked it out, and we just kept going. I trusted him. He trusted me. And we did it together.”

 

Back in 2022, many analysts suggested shipping off either Brown or Tatum to form a Championship roster. The ‘experts’ didn’t see them as an effective one-two punch to win it all. Therefore, Brown admitted that him and JT had gone through a lot in all these years of losses. But they really shut down all the noise and believed in each other, working to attain the Championship.

The Boston front office gave Jaylen Brown the biggest contract in NBA history[five years, $304 million] last year, showing their faith on the Tatum-Brown duo. And it worked wonders for them.

In the middle of all the festivities, Brown also took out time to thank his running mate, Jayson Tatum. Before Brown took over in the last two series, the Celtics were clearly Tatum’s team. But very selflessly Tatum handed over the keys to Brown to cater to the team’s needs.

Keeping that in mind, Brown said,

“Jayson, I can’t talk enough about his selflessness. I can’t talk enough about his attitude. It’s just how he approached not just this series or the Finals but just the playoffs in general.”

Brown correctly pointed out that given the situation that Boston was in, if Tatum had taken over from Game 1, he would hands down be the frontrunner to win the Finals MVP. But unfortunately, JT ran into a cold shooting spree from Game 1, and had to quickly adapt, and hand over the ball to Brown.

This selfless team-first attitude is what brought the Celtics the Championship.