I think the "bad handles" thing is overplayed. Not necessarily untrue, he does dribble himself into trouble more than he should, but somehow it seems to get blown our of proportion.
If you look at season total turnovers last season, Garland, Morant, Doncic, and Trae Young, all had more. Harden, Lavine, and Holiday were all about the same. I acknowledge that Brown is not a primary ball handler but his usage (27.1%) in right up there with most of these guys.
You missed another major factor - assists:
Garland - 7.8 per game
Morant - 8.1 per game
Doncic - 8.0 per game
Young - 10.2 per game
Brown - 3.5 (!) per game
That’s the issue. He’s really only a scorer - a primary iso scorer at that - but doesn’t really do much else to playmake for others or help his team offensively. So of course his awful ball handling, decision-making, and turnover rate are going to be more impactful and noticeable given that he does much less offensively on the whole.
His turnovers would be much more palatable if he was doing more to help the team offensively, which justifies the risk. But he simply doesn’t. And that’s why even with Tatum only having a little over one assist more per game - though that’s certainly trending up after his improvements - you hear less about his turnovers per game, as he’s helping doing other things for his team. Hell, even JT’s presence out there is helpful for his teammates, as he draws double teams and commands the attention of the defense in ways that JB simply doesn’t/can’t.
I didn't ignore assists. I tried to normalize the total turnovers to usage. The ball is in Brown's hands a lot, in the same range as any of these other players. So how many of those touches lead to turnovers. To me that was a fair way to compare. It matters less whether he turned it over trying to pass or shoot.
I agree, Brown does dribble into trouble more than he should (I thought I made that clear). That is part ability ("handles" if you will) and part decision making. It is also part how the rest of the team is executing on offense. But statistically, when you look at turnovers of other high usage players, Brown is not that far off of the norm.
Another normalized stat you can look at is Turnover Ratio (Turnover Ratio, aka turnover percentage, is the percentage of a player's possessions that end in a turnover.). So this reflects turnovers normalized directly to the number of possessions by the player. Brown was 10.1% in the regular season, pretty much in the middle of the pack for the league overall. This went up to 12.5% in the playoffs last season so this supports the premise that he got worse in the playoffs.
For context, I went back and looked at Brown's playoff Turnover Ratio for the last several seasons:
2019-20 10.5%
2020-21 Did not play
2021-22 11.7%
2022-23 12.5%
So seems to be getting worse. Probably trying to do more, maybe too much. But this is still to me, as much about decision making as anything. Again, absolutely something he should be working on, but I don't see it as some major flaw in this game.
