I've recently noticed that people have soured on Jaylen Brown a lot after this season, with most labelling him as an average 3 and D role player with a ceiling of being a wing who's not elite at anything, while Tatum and Hayward still receive unlimited backing and love from Celtics fans as a future star or a star waiting to bounce back. While I do not intend to turn this thread into one that compares Brown with the two, I would like to point out that Brown is a top tier young wing who is underrated by his own fans, who believe that he is a complementary player with no shot at NBA stardom.
1. Underrated offensive potential
Even after a turbulent season for Jaylen Brown, which included him completely ****ting the bed to start off the season as well as only limited to playing around 20 MPG when he was hitting his stride to close out the season (Stevens would refuse to play him more than 20-22 minutes per game at the end of the season unless he set the court on fire from the get go), he still managed to lead our main rotation players in points per touch, a statistic that shows how many points a player scores on average every time he touches the ball. It also hasn't been due to a decrease in usage rate, as Brown managed to be among the leaders in this category ever since his rookie season (that season was his lowest, ranked 5th overall if you count Demetrius Jackson's measly sample size of 3.4 MPG), and managed to maintain that type of efficiency in his playoff run last season (best points per touch by far on that playoff squad, leading second placed Jayson Tatum 0.402 to 0.346 on 24% usage). People love to harp on how he is unable to score as a main option, but keep on ignoring the stats that point out his ability to score efficiently, even on increased usage.
Link for reference:
https://stats.nba.com/players/touches/?Season=2018-19&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&TeamID=1610612738&dir=1&sort=PTS_PER_TOUCH2. Ignorance of the circumstances surrounding him this season
It wasn't a very good season for Brown this year, but people often forget that his stats were very likely muted due to the difficulties he faced this season. It's one thing to play bad in the first half of the season and have it affect your stats, but it's another thing when you don't get the playing time you deserve and get stuck in a bench role, not to mention having little to no plays run for you to make plays when you're getting your act together affecting your stats. Brown has shown flashes of last year's playoff run when he was given a longer leash by Brad Stevens in the second half of the season, such as the loss against Charlotte that was ruined due to the team refusing to go back to Brown, who was tearing it up that game. When you look past such circumstances, you'll likely see a young wing who has improved every season and still has a lot of room to grow as a player, instead of a stagnating youngster who has a lack of desire and ability to develop into a star.
All in all, I don't see why is the board so down on a 23 year old wing who has shown that he can perform on the biggest stage of the game and has shown that run was not a fluke whenever the team gives him the opportunity to shine. He does have concerns, but his strengths are often overlooked and ignored, and I feel that we should be more optimistic on him if we are going to believe that Tatum is a future superstar and Hayward will bounce back to Utah Hayward next season. I'm all in for giving him and Tatum the reins of the team in the future.
Topic: The ridiculous pessimism regarding Jaylen Brown (Read 13418 times)