Jaylen Brown won the Larry Bird trophy as most valuable player for the Eastern Conference finals, after sending the pass that took Boston Celtics to the final.
“I wasn’t expecting that at all,” Brown said Monday night, basking in the glow of his team’s victory with the Bird trophy next to him on the table.
“I don’t ever win s—. I was just happy we won.”
Brown, who averaged 29.8 points, five rebounds, three assists, and two steals in the series, received five of a possible nine votes.
The other four went to Tatum, who scored 26 points with 13 rebounds and 8 assists in Game 4 and averaged 30.3 points and 10.3 boards in the conference finals.
The award winner receives the trophy named after Bird, the Celtic legend. Brown (and Tatum, for that matter) can become one himself if he helps Boston win its record 18th title in a couple of weeks.
“He was unreal this whole series, a complete player on both sides of the ball that you don’t really see much these days,” said Derrick White of Brown.
Brown, who earlier in this series learned he was not named to any of the three All-NBA teams and didn’t like it, scored a game-high 29 points to go with six rebounds, two assists, and three steals in the Celtics’ 105-102 win over the Indiana Pacers in Game 4.
Brown finished Game 4 shooting 11 of 22 from the field with a team-high four 3-pointers but was much better in the second half.
When Boston went to halftime with a 1-point lead, Brown was just 4-of-11 shooting.
“I was playing like trash in the first half,” Brown said.
“The pace was really getting to me, I felt like I was a step behind. I just needed to be a little more patient in the second half and let the game kind of come to me a little more. I was just trying to get to the basket and use my physicality, but if the game tells you to shoot a jump shot, you gotta shoot a jump shot.”
