Who you got? Jaylen Brown’s dunk on LeBron James or Marcus Smart’s behind-the-back pass in traffic?


Photo of Marcus Smart and Jaylen Brown courtesy of the Boston Globe

The Boston Celtics may have played their best game of the season against the Los Angeles Lakers on Monday night and they gave us a couple of highlights that would make the All Star Game jealous.

Marcus Smart has come into his own. His development has been overlooked because teammates Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum have put themselves on the All Star radar, but Marcus has become a really basketball player. Celtics fans have known what he brings on a nightly basis, but the league is beginning to understand.

Marcus is hovering around league average as a three-point shooter, and his improvement as a ball handler over the past couple of years has been impressive. He sometimes makes a play that will make you say “wow,” and this dish to Enes Kanter in the second quarter on Monday night was certainly one of them.


Marcus’ dime flew under the radar a bit because of Jaylen Brown’s emasculating dunk on LeBron James. We’ve seen Jaylen fly threw the paint for some impressive dunks throughout his young career, but his latest could be his most impressive. Leaping two-handed over one of the best players of the generation, as LeBron tried for the block by swatting with both hands, will live on Jaylen’s career highlight reel forever.


But which play was more impressive? Marcus reminded us of a young Rajon Rondo. It was fitting as Rondo watched on for the rival. Jaylen has been racking up posters since he has come into the league, and even though it was as good as it gets for a dunk, we’ve seen him do it over others before even though he’s crossing off bucket list items.


And won’t you look at that, Danny Ainge seems to agree with me. Danny even did a little math to playfully deduct a point for Jaylen’s [ridiculous] technical foul for taunting.


You can’t go wrong with either choice. Who you got? Let me hear it in the comment section. And if you can’t decide, I won’t blame you.

You can follow me on Twitter @Mike_Auc.
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