Brown vs White: On/Off and Assessing a Player's Value?

[jambr380]

Both players played a similar amount at around 34mpg. Jaylen was often lauded for his increased production and rewarded with a top 6 MVP finish. I've also seen it presented as Jaylen leading a ragtag band of try-hards. White on the other hand has taken some criticism for his sharp drop off in shooting, leaving some to question his future with the team.

Despite the optics, Brown finished the season at an underwhelming -5.5ppg on/off and in the 13th percentile. That means the team performed 5.5ppg worse with him on the court than when he was sitting. While White was at +9.4ppg on/off and in the 96th percentile in the whole league. Kenny Atkinson turned heads when he said Derrick White was a top 5 player in the league. His defense and how the team performs with him on the court are no doubt big reasons why he would make such a claim.

Digging deeper, the offense performed similarly with Jaylen on the floor, but the defense suffered quite a bit. With White, while the offense performed slightly better, the defense was otherworldly.

I am not here to say that Derrick White is clearly a better player than Brown. We all know that a lot of what Brown brings to the table - tough shot making and taking on a tough defensive assignment - can be really beneficial in the playoffs and can't always be measured with analytics. But throughout their careers, White has consistently performed very well in this statistic, while Brown has not. So this is not one off year, no Tatum thing.

So what do you think - does on/off hold any level of value to you? Do you think Brown's perceived increased value around the league will entice Brad to move him? Or do you think White still might be the one to be traded since he is another year older and his bigger contract could create more depth pieces on the team?

https://databallr.com/stats/player/jaylen-brown/1627759
https://databallr.com/stats/player/derrick-white/1628401

[Who]

So what do you think - does on/off hold any level of value to you?

It holds a lot of value in my eyes but like all other hoops statistics none of them are perfect.

It is one of the better ones particularly over multiple seasons. Sometimes they can be effected positively or negatively by the lack of a quality backup (boosting your numbers) or having an excellent backup in your position (reducing your numbers). Sometimes it can be hurt (or helped) by playing in 2nd units. By playing more against bench players. Or the opposite, only playing with fellow starters / stronger units.

So not perfect .... but very good.

A very good statistic.

[Who]

I don't understand why Jaylen's on/off numbers are so bad.

I can see why his offensive impact would be lower than people due to average scoring efficiency + middling passing ability + middling spacing. Team offense skills tend to be undervalued (in impact) relative to individual offense skills (same with defense actually).

I can see why his defensive impact is lower than one would expect because his team D is not as strong his man D. Man D tends to get a lot more attention.

Still, even though I can see why his impact numbers would be lower than you might expect at first sight ... I still do not understand why they are as bad as they are. That confuses me. I don't understand it.

I tend not to use these numbers much for Jaylen because I don't think they tell the true story of his talent & impact.

[jambr380]

I don't understand why Jaylen's on/off numbers are so bad.

I can see why his offensive impact would be lower than people due to average scoring efficiency + middling passing ability + middling spacing.

I can see why his defensive impact is lower than one would expect because his team D is not as strong his man D. Man D tends to get a lot more attention.

Still, even though I can see why his impact numbers would be lower than you might expect at first sight ... I still do not understand why they are as bad as they are. That confuses me. I don't understand it.

I tend not to use these numbers much for Jaylen because I don't think they tell the true story of his talent & impact.

I think most of Celtics nation has basically chosen not to use these numbers for Jaylen, especially since he elevated his play so much in the 2024 playoffs. The Jaylen that can stop a player like Luka, hit buzzer beater 3s, and get tough baskets against set defenses in the highest pressure settings doesn't need analytics to analyze his play. It's been proven and it resulted in this team winning a championship.

I guess what needs to be decided moving forward is if we still think Jaylen is that guy and can he elevate his play to the highest level or will he flame out like he did in 2023, 2025, and 2026? It's not an indictment on Jaylen - he's not even considered the best player on the team - but when the best player has gone down, he has unfortunately wilted in high leverage situations. Situations we use to not bring up stats like on/off.

Where some people see tough shot making, others see unneccessarily tough shots. Is White's fast decision making, connectivity, and ability to make his teammates better more valuable? Where some people see Jaylen's tough 1-on-1 defense, others see his lack of team defense. Sure, White has a lot of wow plays of his own with his rim protection, but team defense is something that White excels in.

That could help explain why Jaylen might score well in categories that the average viewer sees, but White actually does better in all of the 'little things'. And those little things might possibly be more helpful in actually winning basketball games.

[DefenseWinsChamps]

In many ways, Brown is very reminiscent of DeRozan, who was plagued by the same issues. On the court, he was a very good offensive player who was not bad at defense. On paper, the team just wasn't as good as the eye test indicated.

But Brown has two things DeRozan didn't. First, he's a good three point shooter that can actually space the floor for teammates. Second, he has the ability to ramp up his defense against opposing superstars to an almost all-defensive level. His defense on Luka was a big reason he won the finals MVP a few years ago. Also, he's a better one-on-one scorer that DeRozan was at his peak.

An additional comment on stats: they don't tell the whole story. The advanced stats gurus want us to believe that their stats can encapsulate the whole game in a few numbers, but they can't. They are often incomplete in different ways. Some guys will always look better (PER for example always favors bigs), and some guys will always look worse. Each stat is a helpful piece of the puzzle, but so is the eye test on the court.

[jambr380]

In many ways, Brown is very reminiscent of DeRozan, who was plagued by the same issues. On the court, he was a very good offensive player who was not bad at defense. On paper, the team just wasn't as good as the eye test indicated.

But Brown has two things DeRozan didn't. First, he's a good three point shooter that can actually space the floor for teammates. Second, he has the ability to ramp up his defense against opposing superstars to an almost all-defensive level. His defense on Luka was a big reason he won the finals MVP a few years ago. Also, he's a better one-on-one scorer that DeRozan was at his peak.

An additional comment on stats: they don't tell the whole story. The advanced stats gurus want us to believe that their stats can encapsulate the whole game in a few numbers, but they can't. They are often incomplete in different ways. Some guys will always look better (PER for example always favors bigs), and some guys will always look worse. Each stat is a helpful piece of the puzzle, but so is the eye test on the court.

The DeRozan comp is a little [dang]ing, but I understand what you mean. Perhaps that argument can better be made for the regular season. As soon as Toronto traded him out for a clear upgrade, they won a championship. Jaylen's 2024 will make him a Celtics legend forever.

For the bolded, I agree with this, too. And not all advanced numbers are against Jaylen. I just brought up one that was easily understood (btw, I don't fully understand a lot of them, so this is not mean to be condescending - I'd like to know more honestly). Jaylen was also a +321 on the season, so he was clearly a plus for the team.

[Moranis]

Brown is not a good 3 point shooter. His 3P+ for his career is 99. 100 is basically league average.  The last 4 years he is 93, 97, 90, 96 so all below his average as he has taken more shots and been more a focus.  His career eFG+ is right at 100 as his is his TS+, and his FT+ is 95.  So he is a below average shooter that is a poor passer and a high volume turnover machine.  It isn't hard to see with objective numbers why the team plays better without Brown on the floor. Earlier on his career when he was getting 3rd or 4th option type shots his league adjusted shooting numbers were much better because he was taking much better shots with less defensive pressure.  Tatum has similar shooting numbers but he is a much better passer and doesn't turn it over nearly as much. 

[Vermont Green]

I don't understand why Jaylen's on/off numbers are so bad.

I can see why his offensive impact would be lower than people due to average scoring efficiency + middling passing ability + middling spacing. Team offense skills tend to be undervalued (in impact) relative to individual offense skills (same with defense actually).

I can see why his defensive impact is lower than one would expect because his team D is not as strong his man D. Man D tends to get a lot more attention.

Still, even though I can see why his impact numbers would be lower than you might expect at first sight ... I still do not understand why they are as bad as they are. That confuses me. I don't understand it.

I tend not to use these numbers much for Jaylen because I don't think they tell the true story of his talent & impact.

This is where I am at.  These stats do not seem to line up with what I see on the court.  It is interesting that in White and Brown, you are comparing probably the one for whom these stats are most favorable (White) to the one whom these stats are the least favorable (Brown). 

I did dig into this a while back, both Tatum and Brown, and one or the other of these guys tends to be the one that is left on the court to prop up the second units.  White tends to get more of his minutes with the core starters.  This did correlate to some degree but by no means did it entirely explain the unexpected advanced stats performance.

As to how important this is, I don't hold it up as some kind of holy grail of stats but you can't disregard it either.  Brown has some flaws in his game and these flaws apparently get amplified by these advanced stats.  I will say that Brown really upped his mid range game this past season.  I see that as adding an important dimension to his game.  As the #1, he got more opportunity to use this and he showed it is a real weapon.  Made him a better player.

[Atzar]

I completely ignore +/- and on/off.  They're dubiously helpful in large samples, completely useless in small ones, and every time I see somebody cite a player's -8 at halftime as proof that they're not playing well, another of my hairs turn gray. 

As for PER and LEBRON+ and whatever else, they can be valuable.  Some more than others.  But it's worth keeping in mind that most of this stuff is created to generate clicks and sell subscriptions.  Their job isn't to process the game of basketball down into a single number; merely to convince fans that they're doing it so those fans then buy what they're selling.  So whenever I hear about a new metric that I'm supposed to sign up for to access, I'm always very skeptical.

[jambr380]

I completely ignore +/- and on/off.  They're dubiously helpful in large samples, completely useless in small ones, and every time I see somebody cite a player's -8 at halftime as proof that they're not playing well, another of my hairs turn gray. 

As for PER and LEBRON+ and whatever else, they can be valuable.  Some more than others.  But it's worth keeping in mind that most of this stuff is created to generate clicks and sell subscriptions.  Their job isn't to process the game of basketball down into a single number; merely to convince fans that they're doing it so those fans then buy what they're selling.  So whenever I hear about a new metric that I'm supposed to sign up for to access, I'm always very skeptical.

I agree that game to game sample sizes are useless. Any one random player can go off and carry other players who happen to be sharing the floor. In on/off, you can have the infamous Tatum and the bench players line-up versus the other starters all playing together.

But we basically have a career long sample size of on/off with both Brown and White showing results that aren't completely far off from what we saw this season. I don't know, I understand not being fully onboard with advanced stats, but I don't think Jaylen was only playing with bad players this year, and White was only playing with good players.

We all just have to acknowledge that it's weird, and say that's the way it is.

[jambr380]

Brown is not a good 3 point shooter. His 3P+ for his career is 99. 100 is basically league average.  The last 4 years he is 93, 97, 90, 96 so all below his average as he has taken more shots and been more a focus.  His career eFG+ is right at 100 as his is his TS+, and his FT+ is 95.  So he is a below average shooter that is a poor passer and a high volume turnover machine.  It isn't hard to see with objective numbers why the team plays better without Brown on the floor. Earlier on his career when he was getting 3rd or 4th option type shots his league adjusted shooting numbers were much better because he was taking much better shots with less defensive pressure.  Tatum has similar shooting numbers but he is a much better passer and doesn't turn it over nearly as much.

This may sound extreme, but I think there is a very good chance Tatum wins MVP this year if the roles were reversed - Brown injured most of the year, and Tatum carrying the team. Tatum has always scored more than Brown, and always had more rebounds and assists. So he likely would have been well into the 30s in ppg.

The team impressed this year with 56 wins, but I would not be surprised if we pushed that up to 60.  Even Brad acknowledged this year's record was a mirage because of all the tanking teams. Tatum has always been a better defender and made his teammates better on the offensive end, so a couple more wins is not out of the question.

And Tatum already had the pedigree and reputation. Brown is only now making his 2nd All-NBA team in 10 seasons. Tatum would have been coming off of 4 straight 1st Team All-NBA team selections and there would have been a lot of hype behind him leading the Celtics to such a great record. We see now that they could get a lot of wins with a lesser player in Brown, but Tatum doing it would have been considered more impressive and validated what most people always thought of him.

[Who]

I completely ignore +/- and on/off.  They're dubiously helpful in large samples, completely useless in small ones, and every time I see somebody cite a player's -8 at halftime as proof that they're not playing well, another of my hairs turn gray. 

As for PER and LEBRON+ and whatever else, they can be valuable.  Some more than others.  But it's worth keeping in mind that most of this stuff is created to generate clicks and sell subscriptions.  Their job isn't to process the game of basketball down into a single number; merely to convince fans that they're doing it so those fans then buy what they're selling.  So whenever I hear about a new metric that I'm supposed to sign up for to access, I'm always very skeptical.

I agree that game to game sample sizes are useless. Any one random player can go off and carry other players who happen to be sharing the floor. In on/off, you can have the infamous Tatum and the bench players line-up versus the other starters all playing together.

But we basically have a career long sample size of on/off with both Brown and White showing results that aren't completely far off from what we saw this season. I don't know, I understand not being fully onboard with advanced stats, but I don't think Jaylen was only playing with bad players this year, and White was only playing with good players.

We all just have to acknowledge that it's weird, and say that's the way it is.

I like lineup data in the +/- for individual games. Both the lineup your team uses and the lineup the opposition is using against it. There is often good information in that data.

Although sometimes it is just who made their shots and who didn't.

One bugaboo I have about lineup data is they often only use one size of the ledger. Tell you who the Celtics lineup was. Not who the opposition was. Some lineups work well against certain lineups and not well against other lineups. Both pieces of data are needing for good information.

One size of the ledger lineup data is only really valuable in huge sample sizes. Often only starting units have enough minutes to get enough of a sample size.

[Who]

A player that Jaylen reminds of in terms of on/off and +/- data is Xavier McDaniel from the mid 80s to early 90s.

McDaniel was fantastic for Seattle in the 80s. He averaged 20.7ppg on 49.4% FG along with 7rpg. He was a very good two way player. Strong defensively. A strange sort of forward. Played more like a PF in terms of his physicality but had a good jump-shot to go with it. Nice midrange shot and outside shot (20 footer).

However, he tends to have bad numbers in the adjusted plus minus whenever I see someone doing historical data. Much like Jaylen.

Two characteristics remind me of Jaylen. (1) the poor passing. X averaged 2.5apg to 2.8 turnovers per game in Seattle. His poor passing continued beyond his time in Seattle with a 1:1 AST:TOV ratio. (2) His TS% was generally around league average.

Both are strong similarities to Jaylen. As is the 20ppg + the strong defense. X tended to be the better rebounder between the two.

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X's career is interesting to look at in terms of the adjusted +/- data as well.

Seattle were poor when he first arrived. Then they took off. They had the 3 highest scoring teammates in the league at one point but all 3 of them were low quality passers. Dale Ellis, X, and Tom Chambers. They were generally around .500 despite having 3 All-Star caliber talents and a few good role players around them too. They had an improbable run to the WCF where they were swept by the Lakers one year.

Then Seattle chose to rebuild. Tom Chambers left in the first free agency to Phoenix. Dale Ellis had alcohol problems so they were looking to offload him. They sent him to MIL for R Pierce. Seattle also drafted two young forwards in Derrick McKey and Shawn Kemp so they decided to trade X too. Clear the way for the young fellas. Rebuild.

X gets traded to Phoenix. This is pre-Barkley Phoenix. KJ's team. They were in the WCF in 1990 and again in 1992. X joined early in the 1991 season. He was seen as the final piece that put the team over the top and get them to the Finals. A hard nosed two way SF (scoring dropped to 16ppg). Exactly what Phoenix needed. Yet the chemistry was never quite right with the group. They underachieve and got knocked out in the first round. The only early playoff loss in that KJ era from 1988-1992.

So who were the starters for Phoenix pre-X and post-X? An old Kurt Rambis and Tim Perry. Two limited forwards. Rambis a PF. Tim Perry a SF/PF. Both among the weaker starters in the league. Yet the team functioned better with them than X.

His 3rd team and final chance at playing on a strong squad was with the 1992 Knicks. Again, X was seen as the final piece in the puzzle. A former 20ppg scorer who can shoot, slash and post up. A two way player whose toughness is a perfect fit for the Knicks. They Knicks won 52 games. X's numbers declined again to 14ppg and 6rpg. NYK decided not to pay him in the summer. They replaced him with Charles Smith who is often mocked for his stint with NY yet NYK improved from 52 wins to 60 wins.

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X was a strange player. On the surface, a 20ppg scorer who defends and rebounds at a well above average level. A non-passer. And with average scoring efficiency.

He should be a low level star and he very much looked like one when he was in Seattle. However, he couldn't maintain that in Phoenix or NY and struggled to fit into both team's offenses. His difficulty fitting in was part of those team's inconsistencies & underachievement.

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I don't mean this as an exact comparison. Just two players with some shared characteristics and bad +/- data. Two oddities.

[jambr380]

That is in an interesting comparison. I remember as a kid being excited when X-Man joined the Celtics. He was good, not great, and I always knew of him having a fairly successful career and he was a fun guy to have around. Seemed to nearing the end of his career at that point, although I just noticed he was 28 when he joined the Cs - that's not old at all.

I think it's pretty clear Jaylen has had a considerably better career and also reached higher highs in the playoffs, but it's an interesting breakdown of what might be holding both of them back. I think Jaylen has made strides with his passing, although it still looks to be something he only looks to do if he can't score, and not just selflessly and quickly moving the ball. Still a tremendous player and I don't want him traded for spare parts, but there is an argument for him to be moved - even in a non-Giannis deal.

[Who]

So the other historical player that I often compare Jaylen Brown to is Dominique Wilkins.

I am going to use his stats from the Atlanta portion of his career. 12 years. 26.4ppg 6.9rpg. Only 2.6apg against 2.6 turnovers per game so a 1:1 AST:TOV ratio. Both slasher wings. Wilkins 1.4spg and 0.7bpg.

D Wilkins shot 46.7% FG and 81.3% FT. He shot less than 10% of shots from 3 (31% 3PT) due to the era he played in. He had 7.4 FTA per game against 21.3 FGA. A good FTr of 34.7%. His overall TS% was 53.9% which is right around league average for his 12yr Atlanta career. Yeah, his adjusted TS+ is exactly 100 = league average scoring efficiency.
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So we have:

* High volume scorer
* Slasher rather than a shooter
* league average scoring efficiency
* low passing / assist numbers
* 1:1 AST:TOV ratio
* High level athlete 6-7 SF

As similarities to Jaylen Brown's profile.

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Like Jaylen, there have always been questions as to how good Dominique Wilkins actually was. Some consider him a top 10 SF all time and a top 50 player all time. Some think he does not belong on either list. Some think he was a prolific scorer but not a winner.

Among the questions people have about Dominique include his (1) jump shooting proficiency [which was dodgy] (2) his defensive capabilites (3) his lack of passing / improving his teammates.

The questions on his jump-shooting and lack of passing are fair. There was less emphasis on passing from your SF in D Wilkins' era. There were several other scoring SFs who could make similar points about. Bernard King had 2.8apg to 3.0 turnovers per game while with the Knicks. Dantley had 3.7apg to 3.4tpg with the Jazz. M Aguirre had 3.8apg to 3.1tpg in Dallas. And these guys were all considered the best SFs in the league after Bird & Dr J.

That said, there were better passing SFs in the 1970s. Rick Barry was a very good passer. Billy Cunningham was a good passer. Havlicek was a good passer. Elgin Baylor was very good passer in the 1960s. So it wasn't unheard of for SFs to be passers / playmakers / point forwards despite recent historical revisions that point forwards only started with Paul Pressey (mid-80s) or Scottie Pippen (90s). In fact, Dr J was getting large amounts of criticism in the late 1970s for not being as good a passer as the other dominant SFs of the 1970s (and Baylor in the 60s) and that was being talked about as one of the main reasons Philly had not gotten back to the Finals in 1978 & 1979. His failure to improve his teammates. To bring players together and make them a team. To create easier offense for his teammates.

So my point is Nique and those other scoring SFs are not completely off the hook. There was less emphasis on passing / playmaking for SFs but there wasn't none. There were plenty of examples particularly among the best of the best that passing is an important skill in a SF.

I do think criticism of Nique's defense was over the top. He was actually a plus defender for a good chunk of his ATL career and an average one for most of the rest of his ATL career. He was capable of being a very good one-on-one defender when he wanted to.

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Nique's career is interesting.

Atlanta had a strong team in the mid 80s from 1986-88. Something like that. It was a young athletic hard nosed defensive team. It was Nique as the only true scorer on the team surrounded by defenders & athletes. They had their best success with this group.

Atlanta couldn't get past BOS though. So they decided to get more scorers. They sacrificed their defense, athleticism & youth to bring in 2 older players in Moses Malone & Reggie Theus as scorers. The team did not improve. It was still good but the East was very competitive in the late 80s and they failed to get out of the first round. In making these changes, their defense predictably got much worse but to their surprise the offense did not improve as much as expected. Moses Malone is the most successful bad passing center in league history. Nique was a high volume average efficiency bad passing SF. So there wasn't much flow to the offense. It never produced highly efficient offenses like Bird's Celtics or Magic's Lakers. Nique (and/or Moses) did not make their teammates better.

Then ATL went into a rebuilding phase. Moses and R Theus were too old. The team got stuck on a .500 treadmill status. Then in 1993-94 Lenny Wilkins came in and got them playing again. Mookie Blaylock arrived and improved their D. Wilkins got them back playing like Nique's 1986-88 Hawks. He convinced Nique to step back some offensively in order to have more team offense (24ppg instead of 26-28ppg). ATL were top of the league at midseason but traded away Nique who they were no longer convinced by.

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So Nique's +/- numbers were mixed.

You get some like the B-ref.com OPM which rate him as a very good offensive player and very good overall player.

Then you have some others like Thinking Basketball's WOWY (with or without you) stats which gave him a score of 1.2 in his prime. So a solid starter. No star. Magic Johnson tops this list with a 10.2. A bunch of top players with 8s or 9s. A load of players in the 5s and 6s range. Nique was way off.

Harvey Pollack had 1993-94 as the earliest Nique data and gave him a -0.8 APM (adjusted plus minus) for his final half season in ATL and half season in LAC. His numbers were poor in BOS as well. A -2.6 in BOS.

So mixed data.

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Dominique's lack of team success and underwhelming regular season team performances is what I would expect from Jaylen if he had his own team. If he was on team's like Nique was on. That all-defense no-offense team (1986-88). And that all-offense no-defense team (1989, 1990). Or the rebuilding teams (1991-93)