Jaylen Brown: “we’re just going to take it one game at a time”

As the Boston Celtics continue to inch their way up the Eastern Conference standings, Ime Udoka’s concept of nameless, faceless opponents is shining through once again.

For the second time in three games (with an All-Star break in between), the Detroit Pistons took the Boston Celtics down to the wire. But this time, it was the C’s who found themselves on top.

After the game on Saturday, Jaylen Brown was asked about what changed to spark this recent Celtics surge. He kept his answer simple, stating that they have just been focusing on the game ahead. Nothing more, nothing less.

“One game at a time, man. That’s all y’all are going to get from me. That’s it. We’re going to take it one game at a time. The difference is kind of going through the course of the season. There’s ups. There’s downs. There’s highs. There’s lows.”

Those lows were real, as Boston was a .500 basketball team up until January 23. Since then, however, they’ve won 12 of their last 14 games and put themselves in a position to fight for homecourt advantage in the playoffs.

Some fans had given up on the Celtics this year, but according to Brown, they don’t care about all that. Their goal is to put their heads down, block out all the noise, and just go to work.

“Some people don’t stick around. They’re not here for the lows but they want to be here for the highs. That’s cool. That’s fine. We’re not paying attention to it. We’re just going to take it one game at a time.”

“Work” on Saturday afternoon involved an ugly battle with the Pistons. Although Boston ended up on top, Detroit (who has the worst record in the league) put up a serious fight.

But when Brown was asked about playing the Pistons, he noted that the record of the opponent shouldn’t matter. In the NBA, every team has enough talent to win any game at any point in time. And in addition, Boston just needs to focus on playing whoever their schedule puts in front of them.

“This is the NBA. At the end of the day, you can lose any given night. And we experienced that earlier in the season when we dropped games to teams we thought we should’ve won and we might’ve won games we probably could’ve lost. At the end of the day, you have to play who’s put out in front of you. We don’t make the schedule. We just play.”

The C’s continue their road trip on Sunday as they take on the new-look Indiana Pacers at 5:00 p.m.