Mikel Brown Jr. Goes From Hero to Goat as Tatum's Buzzer-Beater Sinks Nets

It should have been the night Mikel Brown Jr. announced himself. The Brooklyn rookie scored 13 points in the fourth quarter in Boston, hit the tying three in the final second of regulation, and dragged a winless team into overtime against the Celtics. Then, in about six seconds of overtime, he gave it all back. Brown missed two layups with Brooklyn ahead, switched onto Jayson Tatum on the final play when the Nets had been told not to switch, and watched Tatum’s 17-footer beat the buzzer for a 125-124 Boston win on Tuesday night at TD Garden.

How did Brown force overtime?

With a fourth quarter that erased a late Boston lead. Brown scored 13 points in the period, the New York Post reports, and his tying three in the final second of regulation sent the game to overtime. The chance only existed because Celtics center Mitchell Robinson missed two free throws with three seconds left in regulation, the Associated Press reports. Robinson, a career 50.7 percent free-throw shooter, went 1 of 4 from the line on the night. Brooklyn, 0-3 coming in and playing in front of a sellout crowd of 19,156, suddenly had a game it had no business still being in. That is the part of the night that will get lost, and it should not be: the rookie did the hardest thing first, which was getting his team there at all.

What happened in the last seconds of overtime?

Two mistakes, separated by a successful challenge. Brooklyn led 124-123 when Brown missed a driving layup, the Post reports. Center Day’Ron Sharpe was initially whistled for a loose-ball foul with 6.1 seconds left, but coach Jordi Fernandez called timeout to challenge, and the call was reversed to a foul on Luka Garza. That should have been the escape. Instead Brown missed another layup, this one ill-advised, with 2.3 seconds left. Boston rebounded, called timeout, and on the final play Brown got screened off and switched, leaving the smaller defender on Tatum for the winner. The Post notes the Nets had been told not to switch, and that the mistake cost them Noah Clowney’s size on Tatum. A win that was one smart possession away became a loss on one broken one. Late-game officiating details have decided plenty of early-season games already, as Scottie Barnes found with the first push-off call under the NBA’s new emphasis.

What did Brown say about it?

He did not hide. “It’s just a broken play. I blame me,” Brown said, the Post reports. “We weren’t supposed to switch that, and I switched it. Made a couple of mistakes down the stretch that hurt us, so I’m gonna take the blame on it. Learn from it, get prepared for next game and don’t make the same mistake again. But I’m definitely not gonna forget.” On the layup, he said he saw an open lane and thought he had it, but the ball was slipping out of his hands and Paul George was coming from his right, so going up felt like his last resort rather than falling out of bounds. He added the line that matters most for a rookie: “I can’t make an excuse. There’s a lot of plays down the stretch I messed up on that I take full accountability of, and I’m gonna be better.” Rookies who blame everyone else after a night like this tend to repeat it. Brown sounded like one who will not.

Did his teammates back him up?

Yes, and the most useful backing came with a correction. Clowney said the older players shared the fault, the Post reports: “We were not supposed to switch, but he got cleaned. We’ve got to help him learn how to navigate that screen late in the game. Knowing that they’re looking for Tatum, maybe track right behind the footsteps. But that’s on us as the older guys here. We should’ve let him know that before we even left the timeout huddle. We’re staying with our own.” Clowney also said Brown had been beating himself up, but had done a lot of good in the game and got Brooklyn into the position it was in. That split is the honest version of the night. Brown made the mistakes, and the veterans around him failed to inoculate a rookie against the exact situation that decided the game.

How good was Tatum while all this happened?

Superb, and the free-throw line tells the story. Tatum finished with a game-high 40 points, eight assists and five rebounds, the Post reports, going 18 of 22 from the line, a career high in makes and attempts. He scored six of his points in overtime and committed no turnovers in 42 minutes, according to Celtics Wire. Paul George added 20 points for Boston, and Derrick White scored 16. The Celtics have now won three straight since blowing a 22-point lead in their season opener at Detroit, the AP reports. None of that is the story, though. The story is that Tatum got the last shot at all, and he got it because a rookie gave him the opening twice in the same possession sequence.

What did the rest of the game look like?

Like a game Brooklyn should probably have lost earlier, which makes the ending sting more. Michael Porter Jr. led the Nets with 27 points and 12 rebounds, and Julius Randle scored 24 before fouling out, the AP reports. Randle hit the first two baskets of overtime to put Brooklyn up 121-117. Brown, the sixth pick in the NBA draft out of Louisville, finished with 17 points. The Nets have now lost their first four games, and the pattern is becoming familiar: they can fight back, as they did after a blowout loss to Indiana on Sunday, but they cannot yet finish. The rookie who stole the show in Chicago did it by scoring 20 in a second half; Brown did it for one quarter and then learned the harder lesson in overtime. The Mavericks and Heat showed the same week how quickly a physical game turns on one flagrant, and Dalen Terry’s 43-minute preseason shift showed what rookies on the fringe will do for minutes. Brown is not on the fringe. He is a lottery pick, and lottery picks get judged on the last possession.

What happens next?

Friday, for both teams. Brooklyn hosts Detroit, still hunting its first win, and Boston hosts Chicago, the AP reports. The Nets’ question is narrow and practical: does Brown hold the ball with the shot clock off and a one-point lead, and does he fight through the screen instead of switching when the plan says stay? He has already answered the first part in words. The second part is the one that will show up on film, and on Friday, when some other star gets the ball with the game on the line and a rookie in front of him.