The idea that you can judge Jaylen Brown's entire third year and determine he has leveled off as a player 4 games into his third year is pretty stunning. I am using the word stunning to be respectful.
A 4 game sample size is not a large enough sample size to judge a player's entire year. I am very surprised by the very intelligent posters on this board that are doing so.
Brown developed from raw talent to very exciting as a rookie when he started for a hurt Avery Bradley. He came back his sophomore year and had amazing development in all phases of his game. In the playoffs, even though he got hurt and played so for the last games in the series, he grew again and was the best Celtics on the floor most nights, even scoring 30+ points in two games becoming the youngest Celtic to ever score 30 points in a playoff game.
He has struggled through 4 games. I am going to wait and see before making declarative statements on any of the Celtic players this year and the team as a whole. Let's not forget, this team was 2-2 after 4 games last year as well.
I didn't mean to imply I was writing off Brown's 3rd year, just 4 games in, but a lot of what I mentioned in a post after this has to be concerning.
Brown probably should be a SF. His ball handling isn't really good enough to be a SG and he struggles defensively with the quicker guards. With Hayward and Tatum, though, Brown's only real long term minutes will be at SG. I am concerned about him doing that long term as I think it will continue to cause issues for him.
In addition, he went from the 2nd option on offense last year (behind Irving) to now at best the 4th option (Irving, Hayward, and Tatum), and I think he is struggling a great deal with that change in role. I'd like to think he recovers and figures it out, but that can often be a tough pill to swallow and to adjust to. Tying into that, how does he get his shots? He isn't a great ball handler, he is perhaps the worst shooter in the starting lineup, he isn't going to be a guy that is crashing the boards and taking it coast to coast. Last year, when he was the secondary ball handler, it was a lot easier for him to find his offense, that won't be the case this year, and I'm concerned about how he gets shots, other than when he gets the ball on kick-outs and essentially becomes a spot-up shooter (which isn't his strong point).
And we can't forget the long stretches last year, where it looked like Brown wasn't in the game. This disappearing act is not a new thing this year. Brown often lacked initiative on offense last year. Now that he is down the pecking order and has the ball less, I think there are real concerns that he has a lot of games where you forget he is on the floor.