Jaylen Brown sums up the Pacers’ Game 3 play with a hilarious quote

Jaylen Brown sums up the Pacers’ Game 3 play with a hilarious quote originally appeared in NBC Sports Boston

The Boston Celtics mounted an incredible comeback Saturday night at Gainbridge Fieldhouse to steal Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals and take a 3-0 series lead over the Indiana Pacers.

But you might be wondering how they dropped 18 points to a Pacers team missing their star player, Tyrese Haliburton, due to injury. Were the Celtics out of the game at the start of the contest or were the Pacers simply playing?

Celtics star Jaylen Brown believes it was the latter and found a colorful way to convey that message afterward Boston’s thrilling 114-111 victory.

“I thought Indiana played well,” Brown said. “I mean, you could say we didn’t play that well tonight, but I feel like they just — you had to be there to feel them, they were just flying around.

“So they were shooting the ball well; some of these guys turned into fucking Michael Jordan or something. We can’t figure it out.'”

We wouldn’t go so far as to compare Andrew Nembhard and TJ McConnell to His Airness, but Indy’s guard duo played incredibly well in Haliburton’s absence; Nembhard scored a career-high 32 points on 12-of-21 shooting, while McConnell racked up 23 points on 10-of-17 shooting to go with nine rebounds and six assists.

The Pacers shot an impressive 63.6 percent as a team in the first half, making nearly 70 percent of their 2-point shots (25 of 36) to take a double-digit lead.

The Celtics stayed the course, however, and bounced back with a big fourth quarter in which they outscored Indy by 12 points. A highlight of the comeback was Jayson Tatum’s behind-the-back pass to Al Horford for the 37-year-old seventh history-making 3-pointer in the game.

“We just kept saying, ‘They’re going to let us back in the game, they’re going to let us back in the game,’” Brown added. “We were within 12, 13, 14 points, (within) striking distance, and in the fourth quarter we made some important plays.

“Jayson Tatum made some big plays — that behind-the-back pass to the corner to Al, hanging him in the fucking Louvre.

The Celtics are clearly the most talented team in this series, especially with Haliburton away from Indy. But they still deserve a lot of credit for surviving a scoring barrage in a building where the Pacers hadn’t lost since March 18 and emerging with the victory.

The Celtics have a chance to close out the series in Game 4 on Monday night, with tip-off set for 8 p.m. ET and NBC Sports Boston coverage beginning at 7 p.m. ET with Celtics pregame live.