I have been observing Jaylen Brown's defense yesterday to find clues why he's not doing well on that end. And it's actually not hard to find out why.
We all constantly hear Stevens scream 'solid, solid, solid' to encourage our players to play solid defense. It means: stay in front of your man, move your feed and keep your hands up. Don't do anything fancy, but just make life difficult by not gambling or making unnecessary mistakes.
Unfortunately Brown doesn't do that anymore. What I saw yesterday was a kangaroo set loose on a basketball court. He's jumping all over the place.
Some examples (I wish I could video edit the game and show them here):
a) He comes in as a help defender, then the ball goes back to his man and he rushes out to block the shot, but while hanging in the air the man blows by him for an uncontested lay-up.
b) Next time his man gets passed the ball, Brown closes out too agressively, his man has momentum to dribble to the basket, Brown recovers, but then falls for the pump fake, jumps, and it's an easy lay-in.
c) Now Brown has left his man and sees that he has an open catch-and-shoot, he comes flying in when the ball is being passed to his man, who doesn't even have to make a move to drive to the basket, Theis is just in time to block the ball on the backboard, but as a result the rebound is free for Theis his man and another basket has been given up.
I counted like 5/6 times where Chicago got a lay-up, because Brown got off his feet unnecessarily and left the rest of the defense helpless. To me it was also a big reason why Chicago was able to hang in the game during the 2nd quarter. Brown did a good job in intercepting passing lanes for steals and launching the fast-break though.
But this type of defense is unacceptable. And I don't understand why he's so tumultuous. Brown is long and quick, he bothers guards enough by just staying in front of them. Does he feel that he has to showcase himself on both sides of the court? We've seen him being a lot more agressive on offense as well (which is a good thing by the way!).