It would usually count as a telling moment if a rookie, after only his second basket of the game, turned to his defender and mouthed something about his defense striking enough to warrant a technical foul.
But in the case of Brandon Boston Jr., the moment early in Wednesday’s second quarter wasn’t truly that surprising.
The 20-year-old from Georgia, once a star at Chatsworth Sierra Canyon High before falling to the 51st pick in July’s draft following a below-expectations season at Kentucky, is beloved by the Clippers because he contains multitudes. In postgame news conferences, he shows a wide-eyed, full-smile giddiness for reaching the NBA. When teammates hold television interviews after wins, he is often seen bouncing behind them.
All of it belies a ruthlessness on the court born out of years of training against professionals as a teenager. He might be grateful to be on this stage, but in the deepest reaches of his confidence, the player who once described himself as a “bucket” is confident he can score on anyone on it.
Through three quarters of the Clippers’ 114-111 win over the Celtics at Staples Center, he was the best Boston on the court. He needed only 11 minutes to set a career high in scoring. He made an absurdly difficult, turnaround 3-pointer to beat the halftime buzzer for a 12-point Clippers lead. And in 25 minutes, he finished with 27 points, including a pull-up 3-pointer he celebrated by playing an air guitar while jogging back on defense.
The Clippers (14-12) are counting on Boston to be a piece of their future — it’s why they gave him a two-year contract worth $2.5 million guaranteed, an amount nearly unheard of for a player taken in the 50s. But Wednesday he had to be their present, with leading scorer Paul George sitting because of a bruised elbow. And despite the Clippers’ early runaway scoring to lead by 21, then a Celtics comeback that trimmed that lead to just two, the takeaway was the sight of Boston translating the scoring with which he has lit up the G League into real NBA rotation minutes.
With George out, starting both Marcus Morris and Nicolas Batum, his usual backup, left coach Tyronn Lue with a conundrum of who to play at power forward off the bench. Early on he opted for surrounding center Isaiah Hartenstein with three guards and Boston.
Boston’s learning curve was again evident — a silky jumper leading to a technical foul after an official heard what he was saying toward the defender he’d just scored over. But he would make his first five shots for 13 points in less than 10 minutes, a run ended only by a shot that didn’t draw iron late in the second quarter.
Hamstring tightness sidelined the Celtics’ second-leading scorer, Jaylen Brown, for a fourth consecutive game. Yet even without his 21.4 points per game, the team’s frontcourt size and scoring on the perimeter was enough for the Clippers to prioritize defense, starting Terance Mann over Luke Kennard for their sixth different lineup in the last seven games. Entering Tuesday, the Clippers’ defensive rating when Mann sat was worse by 3.7 points per 100 possessions than when he played, and his length took on greater importance when George was ruled out after an uncharacteristically short warmup while wearing tape over his elbow.
Lue said he could not recall when George injured himself but believed it was during a win Monday in Portland when George showed no signs of discomfort while making four of his six shots in a game-deciding fourth quarter. It was the team’s 98th game this season lost to either injury, health and safety protocols or rest, registering them among the NBA’s top four rosters affected most by attrition.
“We are not the only team going through it,” Lue said. “Last year and this year, teams are going through the same thing. Just something we got to get used to. It is not normal, but we understand that. Last year our whole thing was just needing to adapt. I think we have done a good job of that.
“Now it is about, like we talked about it the last couple of weeks, just capitalizing, making the easy simple play offensively, running our lanes in transition, converting, when we get four-on-threes and three-on-twos and things we are not taking advantage of.”
In George’s place stepped Batum after a nine-game absence.
“We don’t expect him to come back and set the world on fire,” Lue said before tipoff.
“But just having him on the floor and have another IQ guy, a guy who can defend multiple positions, make a shot, play the right way, it’s just good to have him back on the floor.”
Batum’s return was nine minutes in when he rolled his right ankle and left for the locker room with a grimace with eight minutes left in the third quarter with the Clippers’ leading by 13. It grew to 21, but by the time Batum returned with four minutes to play in the quarter, it had been trimmed to 10. Within four more Boston possessions, a five-point lead was hanging by a thread with Boston’s Jayson Tatum holding scissors.
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