At last year's failure (against Miami) I blamed a couple of players and felt like some rigorous changes needed to be made. And Stevens delivered. Smart his time in Boston had to come to an end as he was a loose cannon especially in clutch situations. And while I loved Robert Williams, the decision by Stevens to let him go has already proven to be the right one. Same as Brogdon and Grant Williams. The final player I wanted to part with was Brown.
That idea hasn't changed. I still feel Brown is holding the team back. His man-to-man-defense is decent, but still not at the level it should be, while his team defense is almost non-existent. This as a byproduct of his low BBIQ which hinders him in a lot of ways. His suspicious decision-making and ability to recognize situations worries me a lot going into these playoffs.
In a simple stat, the Celtics on/off-court-numbers (per 100 possessions), remarkably Brown is by far the worst on the team. Because our bench is producing excellently the numbers are a little down for starters in general. I only name players who have played at least 600 minutes so far. In the NBA 97 players have played 2000+ minutes, only 4 of them have a worse score than -7.2 (H.Barnes, Prince, K.Thompson, J.Smith Jr.).
White +3.8
Hauser +2.3
Pritchard +1.2
Horford +0.8
Tatum -0.3
Porzingis -0.7
Kornet -2.2
Holiday -3.6
Brown -7.2