As always your thinking is logical; and it takes the big picture of lineups into account. My only issue with it is that it doesn’t match reality very well.
First about Brown. It’s true that he’s had some high-visibility stints guarding up (Lebron for example, in the 2018 playoffs), but it’s actually rare for him to do that. He virtually always takes the quicker wing, where he’s typically got a size advantage.
Last year, this simply wasn't true. Defensively, Jaylen played PF as much as the other wing positions. A quick look at the matchup stats reveal that the players he defended the most, measured in time, are littered with PFs.
https://www.nba.com/stats/player/1627759/head-to-head/?Season=2019-20&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&sort=SECONDS&dir=1
Boston's vaunted versatility lets them switch - a lot - and that was the plan from the beginning. In fact, the Nesmith pick wasn't just about his shooting (though it looks as though he's got a great chance to be something special with his long-distance shooting alone). Like Jayson and Jaylen (and very much to the point, Romeo), he's got the length and reach to switch up and be another good off-the-ball help defender.
Your stat page is loaded with fascinating details, but it doesn't show what you think it does. Your claim that "Last year, this simply wasn't true" is anything but simple (and incidentally shows a similar picture to every Jaylen Brown season except his rookie season, not just last year). This page almost as much documents Boston's defense in general as it does anything specific to Jaylen.
I do commend you for looking at defense to try to figure out what position a guy is playing. I hope you agree that Brown guarding Bam Adebayo, for example, is sub-optimal, at least for extended minutes. But in fact he guarded Bam for a total of only ten minutes and three seconds in three games, or an average of about three minutes, 21 seconds per game.
Rather than just scanning a list of players Jaylen was guarding last season, take a look at a couple of approaches to what position Jaylen was playing during the year as a whole. Here is 82games’ take:
Production by Position
Player Floor Time Stats by Position
Position Min
PG 0%
SG 27%
SF 25%
PF 2%
C |
In other words, Jaylen played 2% of team minutes at 4 by this method. That they estimate that by far he played the bulk of his minutes at the two wing positions (27% at 2 and 25% at 3) won’t surprise anyone who was watching Boston regularly last year.
A similar picture emerges using Basketball Reference’s approach:
Play-by-Play
Position Estimate
Season Pos MP PG% SG% SF% PF%
16-17 SF 1341 74% 26%
17-18 SG 2152 2% 51% 45% 3%
18-19 SG 1913 1% 58% 41%
19-20 SG 1934 0% 50% 46% 4%
20-21 SG 238 1% 49% 48% 3% |
Note that these percentages are of his total minutes, while the 82games estimate is a % of team total minutes - so they’re actually pretty close.
Bigger picture: however much time Tatum and Brown were spending playing power forward last season (and Tatum’s minutes at 4 undoubtedly increased), it had little impact on Ojeleye’s minutes. As I pointed out above, Ojeleye was mostly playing with Tatum on the floor at the same time.
We default to an idea about lineups that is more rigid than reality; and this disconnect has only increased in the last generation; and it is most pronounced with a team like the Celtics that does a lot of switching.
Topic: Why did we draft Nesmith again? (Read 24648 times)