This post may need to be reported as a murder attempt on DeathoftheBambino.
It’s more interesting that he’s such an outlier than anything else. His role, when he is playing right, is often to take the space created by the ball movement and go to the rim so I might expect some of this but having it seem so different is interesting. From the eye check I seldom think he’s being overly selfish watching him play and in all things basketball I think that does still matter. But maybe a reason why we are getting so much Hayward is something the Celtics are tracking about who is actually keeping the ball moving.
The article is so flawed that it doesn't even bother me. I actually heard about it yesterday when none other than Felger and Mazz were using it as an opportunity to do their passive-aggressive teardown of a player. The reality is the article is joke, and completely lacking in context. Let's start with this:
Among the litany of stats nba.com tracks are touches and passes for individual players. They don’t, however, track the percentage of times a player passes the ball per touch. (They do it for touches in the paint and from the elbow, though not overall, which seems strange.)
The reason NBA.com doesn't track the percentage of times a player passes the ball per touch is because if you're trying to make some sort of conclusion about whether a guy shoots more than he should, or passes too little, there is way too much fucking noise in the numbers. For example, if Morris is trying to inbounds a ball after a made basket, and the opponent is guarding Kyrie, so Al comes back as an outlet, and Morris passes to Al, who then passes it off to Kyrie, what does that tell anyone? Al touched and passed it? Great, what else was he going to do with it 90 feet from his own basket? Shoot it? When you are getting the ball at the elbow or in the paint, that's when there is actually decisions being made as to whether or not to pass or shoot. That's where Jaylen usually gets the ball. It's not where Terry Rozier usually gets the ball. Unlike the author, the part i found strange was that the author noted that NBA.com has breakdowns for touches in the paint and elbow, and the author didn't feel the need to talk about those?
Then there's this gem:
But there’s one outlier.
Now, there has to be one player who passes less than everyone else on the team. It’s only natural. Common sense would lead you to believe it’s the team’s top scorer, or at least the second-highest scorer on the team.
Well, that’s not the case with the Celtics. In fact, the player who’s touches result in a pass the least for the C’s is their fourth-highest scorer in terms of points per game (12.7).
Umm, no dumbass. Common sense would not lead anyone to believe that the guy who passes the least is the team's top scorer. Jaylen Brown gets the 7th most minutes of anyone on the team. He doesn't play enough minutes to be the leading scorer, even though he passes less than anyone else based on a % of his touches, because his touches are less than everyone else's. If he was going to be the leading scorer, he'd need to pass like 10% of the time given the minutes he plays. Then we'd be talking about Lou Williams. But we're not.
Here's the cough conclusion cough of this hit piece:
So, according to nba.com, Brown gets 31.7 touches per game and makes 17.1 passes a game. He also attempts 10.8 field goals per game. That means he’s shooting the ball 34.1 percent of the time he touches it and only passes it 53.9 percent of the time.
It wouldn’t mean much if Brown was in the same grouping as Irving, Morris and Tatum, but he’s in a league of his own. He, legitimately, barely passes the ball half the time. You would think that’s a byproduct of the Celtics’ having too many shooters, but he’s the lone outlier in the bunch.
Although it’s hard to know who Morris was specifically calling out when he talked about making sacrifices on Saturday, these numbers alone make it hard to believe one of the players he alluded to wasn’t Brown.
The reason why Morris/Tatum/Irving pass the ball as much as they do is because they are playing with each other. Jaylen Brown is spending most of his minutes with Terry Rozier, Gordon Hayward, Daniel Theis, etc. Since returning from that brief injury 32 games ago, Jaylen Brown is shooting 48% from the floor. Terry Rozier is shooting 39.2% over that time period. Gordon Hayward is shooting 43.4%.
So yeah, I want Jaylen Brown shooting the ball when he's obviously the best scorer on the floor. If he's on the floor with Kyrie or Al or Tatum, I'd want him to pass more.
Like others have said, I haven't really looked at Brown and thought to myself he was a ball stopper. In fact, I think for the last 2+ months, he's been one of the few guys who has consistently tried to attack the rim, something we were all getting on this team about during the first 20 games of the year. And he's been successful at it. The guy has one bad game, and there's Marcus Morris bitching to the media about it, and now it's time to attack JB. Shocking. It doesn't surprise me Felger and Mazz loved this piece of shit writing. It's right in their wheelhouse.
I will say this though, someone called into the radio today and said they were at the game the other night, and they thought JB was clearly not passing to Gordon for whatever reason. Like literally wouldn't throw him the ball. They also said they noticed after Gordon made a good play and everyone was high fiving him, Brown walked away and sat on the bench. Maybe there is something going on with Gordon and Brown right now. If so, Brown will not win that war in the locker room or in the front office. Even if he is playing better.