When Jaylen entered the league I loved his game - he was super athletic, he played hard on D, and he was a beast attacking the basket - and these were all traits I loved to see.
Over the past few years I've found myself more and more frustrated by Jaylen. Every year he seemed more and more like he was unable to overcome his ego - like he felt the neet to constantly compete with Tatum to try to be the #1 guy, and it seemed like this took priority over winning games. There were the bad forced shots, the excessive threes, the excessive dribbling/ISO play, the unwillingness to pass, the unforced turnovers, the driving blindly into traffic, etc...even early on this season it seemed like it was just more of the same.
BUT I'm a very strong believer that if you're going to be critical of somebody when they are doing bad, then you also need to praise them when they are doing good...and I have absolutely loved what I have seen from Jaylen Brown over this past 4-6 weeks of play. Somewhere along the line it seems like something just clicked within him, and he's just changed his mentality completely. He's been taking very few poor shots, he's been much more aggressive attacking the basket, he's been consistently moving the ball when there's been a better shot available. His shot attempts are down a little, his PPG average is the lowest its been for a couple of years now, and yet I've never been happer with his game then I am right now. He really does look as if he has well and truly bought in to the team concept and shown a willingness to sacrifice his own personal stats for the good of the team - and when he's playing like this, the Celtics are very, very, very hard to beat.
So I just wanted to make this post to really vocalise my appreciate for what Jaylen has been doing the past few weeks. He has been fantastic, and the way he's been playing has been exactly what the Celtics have needed from him for a long time now. If really hope that this isn't just a brief streak and that he will keep this up long term - if he can then this team is going to be very, very hard to beat in a 7 game series and may have serious "dynasty" potential.