Yup. Kind of a Carmelo Anthony-esque situation with him. Impressive box score numbers, limited positive impact on winning.

He requires the ball because he isn’t a great off ball minded player and still is inefficient with the ball. I mean look how much Jrue did with spur of the moment plays during their limited time together. Jrue would get these quiet 20 point games with a ton of those coming from him making cuts or rebound positioning based off of feeling of the game. Jaylen is wildly talented but it is like he has no feel of the game outside of one on one situations. When he is off ball it is like he just looks for an open space and halfway watches waiting for a pass. Some of that could be cause Mazzula wants 70% shots from the 3 but it is getting obvious to me one of those guys is doing it wrong and it needs addressing.

Also, His passing never feels like it is because he knows the way it can collapse a defense but just cause it is either the play or because what he wants to do didn’t pan out. I just don’t know how to articulate Jaylen’s lack of chemistry or feel or whatever it is but i’ve never been one to buy into it because it doesn’t seem to pass the eye test for me. Tbh, Embiid is very similar of a player in several of these complaints but Embiid is an outlier because he is a big body center who welcomes massive mismatches as a center. Brown doesn’t get massive mismatches in the same way in size or speed.

Lmao for a guy with the rep of a superstar that’s not good. Folks were saying he should have MVP consideration…hell, he called himself the best 2way guy in the game.

He thinks he was being held back by Tatum, thinks he’s “sacrificing” for the team, yadda yadda yadda. 

A dude with that ego, with that superstar perception, getting paid $300M+ should be doing better than volume scoring on mid efficiency. Not tryna hear allat. 

Yet somehow he landed in the First Team conversation amongst a sea of first-round Hall of Fame talents

The bunch of shooters bail out their offensive inability. You don’t need to be a metrics reader to know that. You’ll see it

His struggles happen against teams with real rim protection. His +/- took a nosedive with Embiid’s return.

Opposing coaches knew that in order to slow down Jaylen this season, turn him into more of a jump shooter. Instead of allowing him to play like 2009 Lebron. Embiid sat when Jaylen sat.

He’s still an awesome player who carried the team. His game won’t really work for +/-. Once he improves his pull up jump shooting that will balance out.

Lmao

Lmaooo that’s the perfect way to describe him

Dude you just resumed his whole playing style.

He’s most effective against second units as a ball handler otherwise he should absolutely not be running the offense. His handle is sketchy and he gets tunnel vision, which a strong defender will eat up.

A poor man’s prime Paul George. PG being a better defender and ball handler but also was better at being off ball than Brown. After struggling in his new role and with injuries last year he’s also gotten a bit more comfortable reducing his role a bit while still having some ability to scale up

He ran an offense with a 120+ ORTG this year.

Jaylen “KumBucketz” Brown

Also, Brown typically has very good “on” numbers, so, I’ve never seen him as a massive problem per se

Yeah, it’s not so much that he makes Boston “worse”…it’s just that he doesn’t really move the needle. When he’s off the floor/missing a game(s), they don’t miss a beat. Their net rtg and win% is still elite.

For a guy on a $300M deal…that’s nightmarishly bad lol.

Yah the thing that gets me the most which I plan to make a full length post on is how good specifically pritchard is when he has the ball instead of brown. He subsists on a diet of short midrange that he shoots at legit sga levels. Step back 3s and layups. He has like 1.2ppp on isos. He averages 27 7 5 on 60ts per 75 with brown off the court.

I mean Derrick White and Tatum don’t have this issue despite Boston being so deep. Post Achilles injury Tatum came back and had still had a better +/- than Brown and Tatum’s +/- was his worst since 2020.

JB discourse highlights how idealized the “two-way wing” archetype has become. People constantly say smaller guards are getting phased out, that wing-sized players are kings of the modern playoff NBA. But the number of wings who actually have the handle and playmaking to be real lead options is quite small. What you mostly get are wings whose flaws aren’t loud enough to indict them, but real enough to bury their ceiling. Like Luka Doncic has a million absurd skills but the ball handling to just navigate with zero issues at 6’8 gets wildly taken for granted and really rare.

Also there’s the defensive halo mythology of these guys. People remember the stretches where JB locked in on D, especially the 2024 playoffs, and treat that as his baseline. When his usage rises and the defense tails off, you already get the ready made cope: he’s conserving for the playoffs. So people’s mental model of him view him as this strong defender while he’s in this expanded offensive role, as if both coexist even though they never do. “He’ll turn it on later” line is usually cope. JB definitely isnt a bad defender but he did not provide real meaningful value on that end all yr(or last season)

So add it all up, this archetype the “ two-way force with the size to score on anyone and the handle to run an offense” if you strip it down the skills people over credit these wings with by default are doing alot of unearned work. Wings get seen as jack of all trades but it’s often not really a positive when so many skills are diluted.

This is a very fair and balanced take. I agree even as someone who supports Brown.

Derozan with good defense is a vastly different tier of player

Well it’s not derozan again as you agree he’s a much better defender than derozan.

Derozan’s still got the sauce. Nearly 20 PPG on 59% TS. The Celtics could trade JB for Derozan and test out your theory.

Dude Derozan can playmake and kind of known for low turnovers

Worst take I’ve read the entire playoffs so far. Great job 😂😂😂

Yeah, he also has a ring, a Conference Finals MVP, and an NBA Finals MVP but other than that, he’s just DeMar DeRozan with better PR according to you lol

Yeah better off as a 1b type that’s fair. People will take that as a slight but paired with a star at the start of his career we might be talking about DeRoxan differently.

This is dead ass just Derozan with really good defense.

Yea but that’s a really fucking good player though isn’t it? People hear stuff on podcasts and regurgitate it because they think it’s an insult. Make Derozan an all NBA caliber defender and what have you got.

What’s the opposite of Rui Hachimura erasure?

If you mind me asking a noob fan question, what is LMR?

He’s basically RJ Barrett with a larger usage rate

Having a few of these in a vacuum isn’t horrid, and I’m sure a lot of stars are in similar ranges for some of these stats. I’m also sure they’re not in this range for all of these stats.

Case in point, Derrick White was asked to shoulder a larger offensive load and more central role in the offense this year. Compared to his previous 3 seasons in Boston, his usage rate had only a relatively modest uptick from an average of 18.7 to 22.0, but his TS cratered from an average of .607 to .529 this season. Meanwhile, Brown this season was able to maintain a .573 TS on a hefty 36.2 usage.

Exactly. One of the typical problems with volume scorers is that they don’t add much outside of that, so they don’t scale well next to other stars (especially other volume scorers).

But JB has proven he can still be a winning player next to another star.

Finally some sanity in this sub. Thank you. The takes on Jaylen, even with all his flaws have seemed so extreme at times. I guess it depends on the thread and the day lol

Jb doesn’t space the floor defenses are happy to give him pull up 3s. Hes also an overrated defender. Hes probably the worst off ball defender on the Celtics not named vucevic. Just horrendous awareness. In terms of poa hugo Walsh clear him massively

Jb doesnt space the floor nor defend

Are we sure Pritchard cannot scale however and score 20-25 on the same efficiency with high usage. He scored 17 this year.

White can’t but his advanced stats have usually been great because he’s a great defender for a guard not because he’s an top tier guy on offense.

A Single season of data is still a tiny sample when it comes to individual player +- and should be ignored. People also fail to see the Forrest through the trees when it comes to impact/on-off data. You can’t actually build a team out of high impact role players. It can work in regular season sometimes but would get rolled in playoffs. Someone has to take shots, initiate offense, be the sin-eater when the shot clock gets low.

And yet the Celtics have been the best team in the league for the duration of his career. How do we reconcile that?

You guys weren’t calling him a bum when we hoisted banner 18 tho

This has been my take for years now. It seems like people wanna have their cake and eat it too when it comes to how we discuss JB. 

Being league average TS on high volume isn’t great.  Guys with above average volume should have above average efficiency

Is Brown actually overrated though? I mean, I don’t think anyone considers him top 3 or top 5. And even those top 5 guys have glaring holes as defenders but are great offensive players

Brown got the FMCP only because he “shut down Luka”. Luka had better numbers with higher efficiency outside of FT line than both Tatum/Brown, but famously was atrocious on defence. They rewarded Brown instead of Tatum only because he was defending Luka. Tatum defence in the finals is overlooked. 

This is it exactly. There are a LOT of delusional Boston fans who genuinely think the Celtics could do what they did this year without him or that he isn’t a winning player.

I think the +/- gets funky because when the system is working he isn’t integral. The Celtics lock down, spam 3s, and rebound long misses. He isn’t the most locked in defender or the best shooter and he doesn’t move the ball well.

That being said, nobody else on that roster can stabilize a game or provide consistent offense when the 3 is missing or the opponent is equally locked in on defense. Without him/Tatum those advanced stat darlings would give up some diabolical runs when things start going wrong.

He is not worth his contract and I doubt they can win a championship paying him that much but the way that advanced stats enthusiasts talk about the players in Boston gives me a headache.

Nah, Cade has more steals/ blocks and a way better assist to turnover ratio. Jaylon Brown doesn’t need to be on the floor for the Celtics to run their offense whereas Cade does for you

but tbf all those same criticisms could be levied against Cade but his on/off splits are among the best in the league. 

Cade gets a ton of stocks/deflections and while turnovers are high, he averages 7 rim assists per 100 and 2.4 assists per on-ball min so he’s definitely mitigating the turnovers with high level creation.

Cade has many things on him. Hes a brilliant passer. And more importantly he fits the system. Without Cade yall have no offense. Mazzulas system doesn’t need jaylen brown. He can work in it but he doesn’t run it.

Cade is a much better playmaker than Jaylen Brown.

Cade is a much better defender and playmaker. Also Cades shot diet isn’t pure midrange he actually forces defenses into rotation.

I kinda think it’s a problem with how the Celtics as a team are playing philosophically. His advanced stats with Mazzulla vs Udoka took a bit of hit (and they obviously jumped this year without Tatum) and it’s probably because Mazzulla is convinced this team’s ceiling is reached by generating good 3 looks rather than playing in the normal flow of basketball tbh

That’s because when Cade is off, no one else can run the offense. 

at the very top of the page is Browns ~30 ppg with a team that was supposed to be rebuilding.

You said winning matters over stats but you are using stats to make your case, no?

Boston was +6.2 in Brown’s 2445 minutes on the court this season and +10.8 in Brown’s 1504 minutes off the court this season. That was also true to a much greater effect in this playoff series (-4.5 in his 249 on and +26.9 in his 88 off) but garbage time does influence the results more with a smaller sample size. There are confounding factors with this type of data for sure, but that has to give people some pause at calling him like an MVP candidate or whatever. He is very overextended as a #1 option.

and is a playoff worthy wing to build around.

Depends on the price. The main issue with Jaylen Brown types isn’t that it is impossible to win with them, it’s that they get way overpaid relative to their impact which makes building a team around them much harder.

He genuinely played well this season and deserved the praise. Eye test was even looking good. Then had all those previous bad habits come back in this series. I don’t really know how you recover from that, he’s kind of proved all his haters correct for good this time 

Just his overall lack of stocks/deflections/OREB indicate he’s pretty lethargic when it comes to hustle plays

Genuinely more then half our sub thinks he’s on par or even better then JT.

Are these mystery fans in the room with us now…? I’d love to see some examples of someone seriously saying that only Jokic is better than JB, and not in jest like how I say Scheierman is the next Larry Bird or Top 5 NBA All-Time.

No need to lie and say C’s fans think he’s better than SGA just to validate your hating, when we universally don’t even think he’s better than Tatum…who we also universally understand is just around Top 5 (pre-injury at that).

I think even the most generous C’s fans (the rabid ones with homer takes galore) have said he’s Top 5 this season, and even those are in a minority. Most on our sub have consistently had him top 20 the last couple years, and just barely in the Top 10 this year because of the carry job with no Tatum and White forgetting how to play basketball for 90% of the year.

Celtics tried this 4 years ago and they said no but only because Brooklyn wanted Smart instead of White

Do what?