Jaylen Brown Is Handling The Spotlight Just Fine

As NBA honors go, Player of the Month is fairly Mickey Mouse. Being named either conference's best player over any given 12-game stretch is straightforwardly impressive, though not enough to get anyone outside of the online paramilitary wing of any team's fanbase to care about it much one way or the other. That is, unless you are Jaylen Brown.

The Boston wing missed out on December's Eastern Conference Player of the Month honor, passed over in favor of another Jalen—Brunson, that is, of the New York Knicks—prompting Brown to request the assignment of guarding the red-hot Kawhi Leonard when his Celtics faced Leonard's Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night. "Why wouldn’t I?" Brown said after the game. "I seek those challenges. I feel like it brings the most out of me." That feeling now looks totally correct. Brown and the Celtics annihilated the (also red-hot!) Clippers for their seventh win in eight, and Brown equalled his career high with 50 points while dominating the matchup with Leonard.