Mikel Brown Jr. hit the biggest shot of his rookie season with 0.2 seconds left on the clock, and the Nets still lost because of a mistake he made later in that same overtime.
That’s the part getting buried under Jayson Tatum’s 40 points and the buzzer-beater that lifted the Boston Celtics past Brooklyn, 125-124, in overtime at TD Garden. Tatum attacked the switch the Nets had explicitly told Brown Jr. not to make, took two dribbles left, and drilled a 17-foot jumper over the mismatch as time expired. None of it happens without the rookie creating his own disaster in the same overtime he fought to force.
The league doesn’t hand out grace periods for rookies anymore.
Brown Jr.’s game-tying three came with 0.2 seconds left in regulation, a shot that forced overtime and should have been the signature moment of his first NBA season. The Nets’ sixth overall pick out of Louisville had already been feasting down the stretch by the time that shot found him, ice-cold off the catch. Had the story stopped there, Brooklyn spends this week building a highlight reel for its rookie point guard instead of a lesson in accountability.
It didn’t stop there. Moments before Tatum’s winning possession, Brown Jr. drove into traffic against Paul George instead of pulling up or drawing a foul, missed the layup, and handed the ball back to Boston with a chance to win it. George has been Boston’s primary wing defender since the Jaylen Brown trade that reshaped this roster — not that it mattered on this particular possession.
Brooklyn still led by one. They needed one defensive possession.
They got the exact opposite. With 2.3 seconds left, Brown Jr. got caught on a screen and switched onto Tatum, the matchup Brooklyn’s coaching staff had banned before the game even started. Tatum punished it immediately, and the final numbers were almost unfair: 40 points, 8 assists, 10-of-20 shooting, and an 18-of-22 night at the free-throw line that set a career high. He’s now the first player in NBA history to finish a game with 40 points and a buzzer-beating winner before the calendar hits November.
Here’s the shot, in case 40 points and a career-high night at the line undersold it:
https://twitter.com/NBA/status/2115271263623184406
My brother texted me the clip before the Celtics had finished celebrating, which tells you how fast a rookie’s reputation can flip in this league now.
Brown Jr. didn’t duck any of it. “It’s just a broken play. I blame me. We weren’t supposed to switch that, and I switched it,” he said after the game. “Made a couple of mistakes down the stretch that hurt us. So I’m going to take the blame for it, learn from it and get prepared for the next game.”
On social media, he put it even more plainly: “That one is on me, Brooklyn! I’m going to shake back. I promise y’all that.”
Nets veteran Noah Clowney tried to spread the weight around afterward: “We’ve got to help him learn how to navigate that screen late in the game… That’s on us as the older guys here.” That’s generous of him. It won’t be remembered that way.
Brooklyn’s own feed had the hero version up within minutes, back when it still looked like the whole story:
https://twitter.com/BrooklynNets/status/2115264994334191682
Boston has won three straight now, part of a stretch where Tatum torching the defending champs to open the season has become the actual story of this young season. But the real lesson from TD Garden has nothing to do with him. A rookie authored the single biggest shot of his career and got erased by a coverage he wasn’t supposed to be in, in that same overtime.
Rookies get one possession to be a hero. Zero to be forgiven.
