Kristaps Porzingis: I absolutely love playing with Jaylen Brown

That was only five years ago. Two seasons ago, he was 40th in post-up efficiency among the 43 players in the league who had 100 post-ups, per Synergy Sports. He currently ranks second in the league for the second straight year even though he’s more than doubled the number of post-ups per game, trailing only his teammate Kristaps Porziņģis. Joe Mazzulla wanted to play through the post more this year, and Tatum is leading that charge. -via The Athletic / November 22, 2023

With Jrue Holiday now in the fold, the Celtics had six starting-quality players — and only five spots to put them in, meaning one of them wouldn’t be introduced as a starter, and one would be sitting on the pine in the closing minutes of games. Both topics quickly were injected into the bloodstream in Boston, with plenty of fans and those in the media opining about how it should go. But rather than letting it fester, and allowing one of the league’s biggest unanswered questions to spiral into a narrative, Jayson Tatum gathered his five teammates in a room at the team’s practice facility — without any coaches, or anyone else. He wanted to address the obvious elephant in the room. “I wanted us to get in the room and talk about it,” Tatum told ESPN. “We all are human and have feelings, and I opened the floor and basically said, ‘There’s six of us. Only five can play at one time. One of us is not going to finish the game all the time. “Whether it’s fair or not, me and JB are probably going to always start, and always finish the game. But we have to be held to a different standard and be able to be coached differently. Whether it’s KP and Al, one of you guys may not finish a game, and you have to be OK with that.” -via ESPN / November 22, 2023

Coach Joe Mazzulla ultimately opted to start Holiday and shift Horford to the bench, creating a starting five of Tatum, Brown, White, Holiday and Porzingis that, in 176 minutes across 10 games together has posted a 9-1 record and is outscoring teams by 28.4 points per 100 possessions — easily the best 5-man group in the NBA to date. But what mattered more to everyone in the room was Holiday’s approach — and offer. “I came out of that meeting, and my respect for him grew tremendously,” Porzingis said. “And I told him right away. “His demeanor in that meeting … he said it, and he meant it, and we knew that he meant it. And being an NBA champion and just having all that experience and coming into a new team, one of the biggest rivals, and just being like that … that also just set the standard for everybody else in that meeting. “Man,” he concluded with a smile, “Top G. Top dude.” -via ESPN / November 22, 2023

Jay King: Jaylen Brown on his playmaking tonight: “Definitely just another part of my game that I’ve been growing. This is a new year, it’s a new season and I feel like I’m playing some of my best basketball just how I’m seeing the floor. And as I get into the flow and the rhythm of things I feel like I’ll be able to continue to do that. I think when I get going, more guys playing off me, trusting that I’m going to make the right read, I think we should go to that a lot more.” -via Twitter @ByJayKing / November 23, 2023