I’m sorry guys, but this isn’t close. I’d easily take Donovan Mitchell over Jaylen. You can’t simply look at numbers when comparing/evaluating players. It’s the intangibles that take players to the next level. I’d favor Mitchell over Brown in the following:
• Basketball IQ
• Basketball instincts
• Playmaking/creating offense
• Making players around you better
You also can't just throw out these arbitrary qualifiers without using any sort of quantitative analysis. You can have all the basketball IQ, instincts, playmaking in the world and still be a worse player than someone else because you can't help a team outscore their opponent on the court as well as the other guy for teams with title aspirations.
I've been a broken record about these types of floor raisers who don't bring much to high-level teams, but I guess I'll make a quick recap about what these players actually bring to the table when it comes to improving the title odds of a team.
Statistical profile of Donovan Mitchell this season (per 100 possessions)Box: 38.5 points, 10.7 shots created (97th percentile), 54.8% offensive load (97th percentile), -0.3% rTS
Non-box: +3.6 OEPM (96th percentile), -0.7 DEPM (40th percentile), +2.9 EPM (93rd percentile)
Statistical profile of Jaylen Brown this season (per 100 possessions)Box: 34.9 points, 6.8 shots created (86th percentile), 43.2% offensive load (88th percentile), +1.4% rTS
Non-box: +2.0 OEPM (91st percentile), 0.0 DEPM (60th percentile), +2.0 EPM (88th percentile)
So what we can see from the numbers is that Mitchell's a considerably better on-ball star than Brown: even though Brown's numbers are likely 'deflated' compared to Mitchell's due to Stevens using him as a 3rd option, Mitchell is still a significantly stronger creator than Brown and a comparable scorer at worst (assuming that Brown doesn't fall off when he's a 1st option in terms of scoring, which is optimistic but not impossible from this
comparison of a star wing moving from a complementary role into a primary one). But is that advantage really important for most high-level teams?
Mitchell's combination of average efficiency volume scoring and good but not great playmaking (he's closer to players like Tatum and Kawhi as playmakers) is valuable on teams devoid of offensive talent: his skillset gives those teams a focal point to run their offence through and it usually yields an average offence unless he's surrounded by an excellent supporting cast: before the Jazz started playing offensively-inclined lineups with 4-5 really good offensive players on their roster to complement Mitchell last season, the Jazz hovered around league average in team ORTG despite having the type of supporting cast that top offensive players have taken to elite heights with quality three point shooters and a great screen setter in Gobert. Moreover, his impact on the Jazz attack has dwindled as he got better and better teammates. The Jazz averaged 118.5 ORTG with Mitchell on the floor this season, but they were still elite without him: the Jazz had a
119.0 ORTG when Mitchell was
off the floor! Obviously lineups with Mitchell faced tougher defences, so the Jazz are definitely better with Mitchell, but this strongly suggests that the Jazz have a really good team even when Mitchell is unavailable.
On the other hand, Brown may not be the best floor raiser ever (although there's a strong argument to be made that Stevens is suppressing his ability with how much he's stuck in an idle off-ball role on offence with absolutely no off-ball sets run for him to utilise his talents
that don't take away from on-ball actions for talented offensive teammates), but his on/off-ball hybrid attack is valuable on better and better teams: his off-ball strengths (eg. shooting, ability to cut and fly off screens and attack off the catch with his improved handle, and even some extra passing that is pretty similar to Mitchell's due to the latter specialising in specific on-ball reads) all scale well on high-level teams stocked with offensive talent because you can still get most of his offensive value without taking away from the offensive talent you have in the first place. Below shows the ORTGs of some Celtics lineups this season (Kemba missed significant time this season, so I'm not using him as a qualifier because the sample size is wonky):
Tatum, Jaylen on: 117.3 ORTG
Tatum on, Jaylen off: 116.1 ORTG
Now a 1.2 point drop might not seem significant, but it's also not negligible: Tatum + Jaylen lineups play like some of the very best offensive teams in the league (eg. Blazers, Jazz, Bucks, Clippers, Suns, Nuggets) while Tatum lineups without Jaylen are closer to teams like the Hawks and Mavericks. When you apply context to the numbers (Brown has been underutilised by Stevens this season), the fact that Jaylen has been able to add a point to strong offensive lineups is very impressive. As for his defence, while his regular season adjusted +/- numbers paint him as an average defender, they tend to understate his defensive value in the playoffs: his ability to stifle a variety of offensive players one on one makes him one of the
most valuable non-big defenders in the postseason (538's RAPTOR also rates him as a good to borderline elite defender in both of his ECF runs in '18 and '20 if you want a slightly larger sample size). So while Brown might still be a worse offensive player even if you take his ability to lift better and better offences into account, his defence more than makes up for this gap when you consider that Mitchell is more or less an average defender.
So after looking at the data and using it to
supplement what we know from watching both players play, a reasonable conclusion would be that Brown is around Mitchell's level even with Brad Stevens depressing his impact on the court. When you take that into account as well as the fact that Jaylen is playing in a position that teams are desperate to stack up talent in, it's not crazy at all to take Jaylen Brown over Donovan Mitchell.
Topic: Which of these Jaylen trades, if any, do you make? (Read 14263 times)