Jaylen Brown #2 on NBA.com Rookie Ladder

[mctyson]

Who the h#ll cares about what he did in Summer League? 

[Celtics18]

Who the h#ll cares about what he did in Summer League?

Nobody.  But, that won't stop us arguing about it.

[LarBrd33]

Speaking of the Rookie ladder.  Not to be outdone by Jaylen's brilliant performance against LeBron...

Jaylen - 19 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 3 steals, 1 block with 8-16 shooting, 3-6 from three and 0-1 from the line in 35 minutes.... 6 point loss to the Cavs.

Embiid - 22 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal and 4 blocks with 7-13 shooting, 4-4 from three and a 4-4 from the line in only 25 minutes.... 1 point loss to the Cavs.

Embiid remains firmly on top of the ladder.  All that in 10 less minutes.  Gonna be crazy to see what he can do if he stays healthy enough to see his minute restriction lift.  Still, gotta love the solid game from jaylen.

[slightly biased bias fan]

Speaking of the Rookie ladder.  Not to be outdone by Jaylen's brilliant performance against LeBron...

Jaylen - 19 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 3 steals, 1 block with 8-16 shooting, 3-6 from three and 0-1 from the line in 35 minutes.... 6 point loss to the Cavs.

Embiid - 22 points, 6 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal and 4 blocks with 7-13 shooting, 4-4 from three and a 4-4 from the line in only 25 minutes.... 1 point loss to the Cavs.

Embiid remains firmly on top of the ladder.  All that in 10 less minutes.  Gonna be crazy to see what he can do if he stays healthy enough to see his minute restriction lift.  Still, gotta love the solid game from jaylen.

Embiid will win rookie of the year if he stays healthy, far more advanced and centralised then any other rookie in contention, the only other rookie that could have taken it from him was Simmons. Jaylen will remain on the bench no matter how good he is playing simply because we are in win mode.

[celticsclay]

Gotta laugh at this in depth analysis of a tiny sample size for a guy who was getting to the rim whenever he pleased and just happend to miss the lay up in his first few games. 

DUde this is the last I'll say about this, because people are misunderstanding the point of me bringing up Summer League.

Go back to pre-draft and almost every single blog, mock, draft website, media type, etc was saying this was a 2 player draft (Simmons and to a lesser extent the Ingrams project) with a lot of mediocrity following them.  Almost every single mock had Jaylen going 8th.  The consensus was that he was a raw young prospect who put up awful advanced stats in College, couldn't shoot and and had an uncanny inability to finish at the hoop.  Against College talent, he could bully his way to the basket, but for whatever reason he couldn't finish.  Bill Simmons brought it up several times on his podcast that Jaylen looked like Jeff Green if Jeff Green couldn't finish at the hoop. 

The pick was far from unanimously well-received.  I was for it, but many Celtic fans here were outraged.  Celtic fans at the draft were disgusted.  Wyc was famously booed.  This happened a few months ago. 

In Summer League, he was exactly as billed.  Everything I had heard about him was on display.   As billed, he could get to the basket.   As billed, he was a terrible shooter (22% from three).  As billed, he had an uncanny inability to finish at the basket (32% shooting).  As billed, he was raw and athletic.  He also was surprisingly kind of weak defensively - which was something he was expected to be able to make an immediate impact at off the bench.

Nothing about Jaylen's Summer League disproved the criticism he received when he was labelled a Tier 3 prospect with some potential potential. Nothing about it was surprising.  He looked like the player everyone said he was... raw, athletic, ability to get to the basket, poor shooter, poor finisher, might struggle to get consistent minutes and shot attempts on a team in win-now mode unless his defense improved dramatically enough for him to make an impact on that end off the bench.

Call it a 'great" performance that he put up bulk stats while playing against College-level talent.  The bottom line is that he struggled in all the ways we were told he'd struggle.  Following Summer League, he actually dropped to #9 on the NBA.com Rookie Ladder this thread is based on:  http://www.nba.com/2016/news/features/scott_howard_cooper/07/17/2016-17-rookie-ladder-summer-league-edition-4/

In pre-season he was the second least efficient player on the team above Jerebko.

None of this really mattered, because he was going to a perfect situation where he'd be able to develop over the next several years on a winning team with an excellent coach and quality pro's pros like Jae Crowder to go against daily in practice.  His ceiling was considerably higher by going to Boston as opposed to being drafted by a team like the Kings.

So you can pretend like you're not surprised that he's started the regular season shooting 53%... 44% from three... and just droped 19 points, 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 3 steals and 1 block against LeBron James.   Maybe you're genuinely not surprised by this.  You should be.  Nothing we saw leading up to this season suggested he'd be this efficient.  And I highly, highly doubt he'll continue putting up those shooting percentages.  He can be great long-term, but he still has a really long way to go.  It's undeniably exciting to see him putting up performances like that in the 5th game of his career.  Be appropriately excited about the signs of development... waste less time retroactively pretending that we saw this coming all along.   Nobody did.  The consensus here was that he'd shoot under 40% this season.  Most here didn't even expect to see him get his first start until next year (I think I won the poll by guessing he'd get a start in early December).

I generally agree with this. For a guy that clearly the third prospect behind Simmons, and for some, Ingram, he was expected to dominate the summer league competition. While his shooting numbers were bad as you point out, I also agree he looked great building on his success. Now we all see him as a clear future star. Thank god we didn't trade the pick. Cheers for the shared optimism.

[YoungOne87]

so glad we didnt trade that pick for okafor.

brown fits our playstyle much better.

I would take Noel over okafor right now, he would probably be cheaper anyway.

since Embiid looking like a beast these two will be greatly stunned in their development if not traded.

I think Brown wont be better than embiid, but definitely better than the other two.

[LarBrd33]

Jaylen's fallen to 7th in the ladder:  http://www.nba.com/article/2016/11/16/rookie-ladder-week-3-2016-17-kris-dunn-shrinking-role-timberwolves

Embiid/Saric of the 2014 Class are #1 and #2, obviously.   Malcom Brogdon is #3... which reflects what a pathetic draft class 2016 has been in the absence of Ben Simmons.  Nobody is standing out at all.  Nobody is even earning enough minutes to even do anything worthwhile. 

Thank god for Embiid and Saric or we might be looking at #36 pick Malcom Brogdon and his 8.2 points, 3 rebound 1.3 steal averages as the worst Rookie of the Year of all time.  Gotta figure someone will eventually stand out.  Dunn?  Hield?  So far it's been pretty terrible.

[alldaboston]

Jaylen's fallen to 7th in the ladder:  http://www.nba.com/article/2016/11/16/rookie-ladder-week-3-2016-17-kris-dunn-shrinking-role-timberwolves

Embiid/Saric of the 2014 Class are #1 and #2, obviously.   Malcom Brogdon is #3... which reflects what a pathetic draft class 2016 has been in the absence of Ben Simmons.  Nobody is standing out at all.  Nobody is even earning enough minutes to even do anything worthwhile. 

Thank god for Embiid and Saric or we might be looking at #36 pick Malcom Brogdon and his 8.2 points, 3 rebound 1.3 steal averages as the worst Rookie of the Year of all time.  Gotta figure someone will eventually stand out.  Dunn?  Hield?  So far it's been pretty terrible.

Do you think Simmons will do enough when he returns to at least warrant discussion for ROY?

[LarBrd33]

Jaylen's fallen to 7th in the ladder:  http://www.nba.com/article/2016/11/16/rookie-ladder-week-3-2016-17-kris-dunn-shrinking-role-timberwolves

Embiid/Saric of the 2014 Class are #1 and #2, obviously.   Malcom Brogdon is #3... which reflects what a pathetic draft class 2016 has been in the absence of Ben Simmons.  Nobody is standing out at all.  Nobody is even earning enough minutes to even do anything worthwhile. 

Thank god for Embiid and Saric or we might be looking at #36 pick Malcom Brogdon and his 8.2 points, 3 rebound 1.3 steal averages as the worst Rookie of the Year of all time.  Gotta figure someone will eventually stand out.  Dunn?  Hield?  So far it's been pretty terrible.

Do you think Simmons will do enough when he returns to at least warrant discussion for ROY?

If he comes back in January, I don't think he'd have to do much to leapfrog Malcom Brogdon for the #3 slot in the Rookie Ladder.  None of the 2016 draftees are even playing over 23 minutes... which you can either take to mean they are oddly all getting brought along slowly or they all suck too much to earn minutes right now (it was called a weak draft outside of Simmons and long-term Ingram).   Presumably, unless Simmons is on an injury related minutes restriction (which seems likely given what the team is doing with Okafor and Embiid) he'll get pumped 30+ minutes a night and have plenty of opportunities for putting up stats.