Jaylen Brown didn’t wait for a pregame meeting or a defensive game plan to make his intentions clear. He sent the message while the Celtics were still in the air.
Joe Mazzulla said Brown texted him on the team plane and told him he wanted the Kawhi Leonard assignment.
“He texted me on the plane … I thought that was great,” Mazzulla said afterward.
Joe Mazzulla says Jaylen Brown texted him on the plane, saying he wanted to guard Kawhi Leonard tonight.
Helped limit Kawhi to 35% shooting on one end.
Dropped 50 points on the other end. pic.twitter.com/vxv1Wem5w1— Taylor Snow (@taylorcsnow) January 4, 2026
Brown didn’t just ask for the matchup, he turned it into the defining storyline of Boston’s night in Inglewood.
On one end, Brown took the lead role in defending Leonard and helped drag the Clippers star into an unusually inefficient evening. Leonard finished with 22 points but shot 6-for-17 from the field, good for 35.3%.
On the other end, Brown authored a blowout all by himself, tying his career high with 50 points on a blistering 18-for-26 shooting performance as the Celtics rolled the Clippers 146–115.
It was the rare superstar night where the box score doesn’t even capture the full intent. Brown wasn’t simply hunting points; he was hunting a challenge, and he said as much.
“I seek those challenges,” Brown said after the game. “I feel like it brings the most out of me. Obviously, Kawhi is one of the greats, so I wanted to start on him.”
The context made the performance even louder. The Clippers came in riding a six-game win streak, and Leonard had been on an absurd heater during that run. Boston didn’t just end the streak, it erased it with a 42-point third quarter, turning a competitive game into a runaway.
Mazzulla’s postgame line about the plane text landed like a coaching anecdote, but the night itself read like a mission statement: Brown called his shot, took the toughest perimeter assignment, and still produced an avalanche on offense.
