The road to Banner 18 is about to get a whole lot tougher for the 2023-24 Boston Celtics.
The C's cruised through the regular season with a league-high 64 wins, setting records and reaching historic milestones along the way. They enter the NBA playoffs as the clear favorites to win it all, but Jaylen Brown is well aware it won't be a cakewalk.
The 27-year-old has helped the Boston Celtics to five Eastern Conference Finals appearances and an NBA Finals berth since being drafted in 2016. Last season, Brown and the C's fell in Game 7 of the East finals to the No. 8 seed Miami Heat. Boston enters this year's postseason still looking for its first NBA championship since 2008.
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Brown knows all too well how teams up their intensity come playoff time. In an exclusive 1-on-1 with our Chris Forsberg, he made it clear he'll be ready to match it.
"The playoffs is another level in that you gotta, like, look within and just unleash whatever it is that is just inside of you to go to that next level," Brown told Forsberg. "Because it's gonna get physical, it's gonna get nasty, it's gonna get ugly. It's gonna be a battle, a war, and your team's gotta make it home. You know what I mean? So whatever you gotta do to go to that place is what you gotta do. So I'm excited about that."
As great as the Celtics have been all season long, Brown hasn't allowed himself to imagine the feeling of bringing Banner 18 to Boston.
"I just take it day by day," Brown said. "You start trying to think about the end result and I think that just messes you, man. That just throws you off. You gotta be ready to die at any moment. Like, you gotta be ready to lose or go home at any moment. So you gotta treat it with that level of awareness and that level of survival.
"You're thinking about the end goal and already like -- you know, we've never even been there. You're thinking about the end goal and you're like rubbing your stomach, teams are, you know, that's how they get you. So you gotta have that high level of alertness. You gotta have a high level of like, survival at all times."
Brown is coming off a strong season in which he averaged 23.0 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 3.6 assists per game while shooting a career-best 49.9 percent from the field. He made tremendous strides as a defender and could even flirt with NBA All-Defense consideration for the first time in his career.
Game 1 of the Celtics' first-round series is set for Sunday at 1 p.m. ET with their opponent still to be determined. You can check out their full first-round schedule here.
Watch Forsberg's full interview with Brown below, or watch on YouTube:
