Brooklyn Nets rookie guard Mikel Brown Jr. has had an interesting start to his first season in the NBA as he has been on a minutes restriction since the beginning. Brown has been dealing with some injuries over the past calendar year and Brooklyn has been trying to bring him along slowly, but he might have had his breakout game against one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference.
"Everything kind of opened up. Mike got it going, Ju [Julius] got it going. That just kind of opened the lane up for me to just create and be myself," Brown said to the media following Tuesday's 125-124 overtime loss to the Boston Celtics. Brown finished the contest with 17 points, five rebounds, and five assists in 28 minutes off the bench, but his biggest impact
was scoring 13 points in the fourth quarter, including the corner three-pointer to send the game into overtime.
"Jordi encouraged that, encouraged me to be aggressive like that and go make a play. So, once I heard that, it was all green from there," Brown continued while explaining what led to his shift in the fourth quarter. While Brown had quite an impressive performance to send the game into overtime, he also made the epitome of a rookie mistake when he attempted a layup towards the end of overtime instead of allowing the Celtics to foul him.
"I did see the open lane. I thought I had a layup, but, the ball was kind of already slipping out my hands, and PG [Paul George] was already coming towards my right side so I felt like if I didn't go up with it, I kind of was going to fall out of bounds," Brown said when asked about that play. At that time that Brown missed the layup, the Nets were leading the Celtics 124-123 with 2.3 seconds left to play, but the Celtics had a timeout to spare.
Boston forward Jayson Tatum went on to hit the game-winner on a mid-range jumpshot over the rookie and while Brown is taking the end of that game as hard as anyone, he shouldn't forget about his performance that put his team in position to upset the Celtics.
Mikel Brown Jr. discusses his performance in Boston and forcing overtime. pic.twitter.com/C1teT2lmoM
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This article originally appeared on Nets Wire: Nets' Mikel Brown Jr. reacts to breakout performance against Celtics
