BOSTON — He is the other J. The All-Star, but not the MVP candidate. The scorer but not the scorer. When high profile trade chatter has come up  it’s been Jaylen Brown, not Jayson Tatum lumped into it.

Brown is still a Celtic—the second-longest tenured Celtic, in fact—and, boy, was Boston glad to have him on Tuesday. Game 2, the Celtics’ season on the line, their best defender, Marcus Smart, on the bench and Brown went off, racking up 25 first-half points (30 overall), dished out six assists and collected five rebounds.

He made 11 of his 18 shots, six of his 10 threes and held Celtics-killer Jrue Holiday to 19 points on 7-of-20 in Boston’s 109–86 win.

There’s no sugar coating it: Boston was punked in Game 1. Four games against the finesse Nets softened the Celtics, who wilted against Milwaukee’s physicality.

 For two days Boston stewed, suffering through film sessions that showed Milwaukee’s front line muscling the Celtics in the paint, Holiday gluing himself to Tatum and Brown and a Bucks defense designed to force contested threes goading Boston into shooting 50 of them.

“We have been a bigger, [more physical team] all year,” said Ime Udoka. “I didn’t love how we didn’t react to them being physical.

We adjusted well, we learned some things from Game 1 … we haven’t been outmuscled like that all year. I think our guys took that to heart. I knew we would come out with the right effort to tonight.

Said Brown, “How you respond is everything in this league. We knew we had to come out and play like our season was on the line.”