Four words. That was all Jaylen Brown needed.
After the Boston Celtics backup unit stunned the fully healthy Orlando Magic 113-108 on Sunday — the final day of the regular season — Brown, sidelined with left Achilles tendinitis, posted four words on X (formerly Twitter): “I love this team.” The tweet drew 10,000 likes in short order. Hard to argue with him.
Boston was without Brown, Jayson Tatum, Derrick White, Payton Pritchard and Neemias Queta, five of its top rotation players, yet rallied from an 11-point third-quarter deficit to hand a mostly healthy Magic squad a loss that will sting well into the postseason, according to Justin Leger and Darren Hartwell of NBC Boston.
Baylor Scheierman led the way with a career-high 30 points on six 3-pointers, Ron Harper Jr. added a career-best 27, and Luka Garza contributed 27 points and 12 rebounds off the bench. It was exactly the kind of depth performance Brown has been cultivating from his team all season.
What the Loss Means for Orlando, What It Says About Boston
The Magic entered Sunday’s finale with a clear incentive: A win would have secured a home play-in game. Instead, they fell to a Celtics team that had almost no one available and nothing to play for. It was the kind of loss that tends to follow a team into the postseason.
Scheierman and Harper combined for 24 of Boston’s 42 third-quarter points while the Magic’s offense went cold, with the Celtics shooting 64% in that period, as Matt Hanifan reported for SI.com. Orlando’s most consistent player, Desmond Bane, played only 17 minutes despite being healthy, a decision by head coach Jamahl Mosley that will surely be questioned. The loss dropped the Magic to the No. 8 seed, sending them to Philadelphia to face the 76ers in the play-in round, per The Magic Insider.
Brown’s Remarkable Season Carrying a Depleted Celtics Roster
Sunday’s win was a fitting coda to one of the most quietly extraordinary leadership seasons in recent Celtics history, a reminder of just how much Brown has carried this team.
When Tatum ruptured his Achilles in the 2025 playoffs, the expectation was that the 2025-26 campaign would be a gap year in Boston. The Celtics opened the season widely projected to win around 41 games. They ended the regular season with 56.
Brown had other ideas, posting career highs of 28.8 points, 7.0 rebounds and 5.2 assists across 70 starts, as Nirav Barman wrote for SB Nation. He did it without Tatum for the first 62 games, and without Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday, both traded in offseason “second apron” salary-dump moves, as well as Al Horford, who departed as a free agent, per ESPN.
Brown also emerged as a team mentor, streaming film sessions on Twitch where he coached up younger players like Jordan Walsh directly, according to SB Nation.
Celtics owner Bill Chisholm noticed.
“He’s always been incredible … The leadership stuff has really been impressive,” Chisholm told The Boston Globe, as quoted by SB Nation. “When we’re struggling in a game, you can just see it. He’s like, ‘OK, this is enough.’ And he puts his head down and gets a really high-quality shot.”
Four words Sunday. There will be plenty more to say once the playoffs begin.
Like Heavy Sports’s content? Be sure to follow us.
This article was originally published on Heavy Sports
The post Jaylen Brown Gives Blunt Reaction After Celtics Backups Stun Orlando appeared first on Heavy Sports.