Let's hope it wipes that smirk off his face, at the very least
As the man said, "I bet you he won't do it again". He's even more right now than he was then.
Danny Ainge deserves a statue for his work from 2004. Built 2 absolute juggernauts. Obviously, he didn’t put the finishing touches on this one but he found the cornerstones and hired the coach who would ultimately become the final architect.
It's really something, he makes Tatum look like a stick. So excited to see JB this season.
Seems like a good time to re-post the race between JB and AJ Bouye, who apparently has run the 40 in as low as 4.45.
His size and speed in transition are up there with the best in the league. He was 2nd last year in ppg in transition (only behind Giannis), 4th in 2023 (only behind Giannis, Lebron and SGA). I love that even though there are 4 other starters comfortable with creating their own offense (and the team in generally was relatively slow, 23rd in pace), it seemed all year like everyone made a conscious effort to get Jaylen the ball whenever there was a transition opportunity.
That looks like how they would have made someone appear as a "disembodied head" on Space Ghost, without bothering with a green screen or anything...
*edit* Ok, now I'm confused... "Jaylen Brown by Colin Kaepernick" on the cover.
Quintessential Marcus Smart on that play too, just randomly being able to get the ball out to Brown without even really touching it.
Etsy. Every couple of months I do a search on Etsy/Redbubble/etc. for fan art Celtics gear. Two of my favorites (I miss Marcus
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100%. That Jaylen sees playing on-ball defense as not just a form of non-verbal communication but with regularities as in music is just so brilliant. Like, in football, we talk about reading defenses, but that sorta evokes reading a fixed text. Jaylen is talking about a kind of conversation reflective of the dynamic of on-ball D. And, damn if it doesn’t work; obviously others do similar, but this is a great articulation, and I bet others can apply it to their game as well.
I'm not so sure. 14 is a pretty nice jump for a guy who was mostly in the 20-25 range a year ago. As noted above, being ranked 14 means if you stay healthy you're a near lock for all-NBA (assuming at least a couple of the guys in front of you will get hurt). Ideally he'd end up like Jimmy Butler, an all-star level regular season performer who raises his game to top 10 heights in the playoffs...and it's worth noting that for much of his prime, Butler has been in that 11-15 range (after his finals run last year, ESPN had Jimmy 12th).
Yes, and Jaylen also isn't that far removed from completely shitting the bed when Tatum got hurt in 2023. He massively and deservedly upped his rep in the 2024 run, but he's still not That Guy imo.
To be fair, a lot of the discussion was around probabilities and projections. It speaks more to Jaylen Brown that he has outperformed even the most optimistic projections in the thread above.
The first quote is a classic example of not knowing the difference between an analytics assessment and a scouting/growth one. As several noted in the thread, the theory on Jaylen was always elite physical skills developing - and they have. The small performance sample---weak college year and so-so numbers in some of the shooting and steals and passing stats--explain the analytic projection, and it wasn't unreasonable. But you don't win in the NBA by betting on median outcomes for your top guys, you win by either tremendous luck (lottery or FA) or by nailing the right-tail projection---which is what happened to Jaylen. I think there's a case you DO win in the middle of the roster by focusing on median outcomes not outliers, as an aside, but that's a different discussion. It's just really hard to get a couple of top 15ish guys and you have to take some risk to get there. Jae Crowder had a 0.1% chance of ever being that guy---the right choice is to prefer someone who had the upside.
There were even some asshats who proposed trading him! Glad they aren’t around here no more.
Ha, I was on board with trading him as recently as last fall.There were even some asshats who proposed trading him! Glad they aren’t around here no more.
I was hugely critical of Jaylen as recently as the first 20 games of last season. I was wrong, and thrilled to be.
I’d be pretty surprised lol, but I do think that Jaylen leads them in shots per game this season. Tatum seems to really be leaning into the playmaker role, and Jaylen seems super aggressive. Think the ppg split will be like 27.6 Tatum, 26 for Jaylen, just because 3 point volume and the FT line.
Yeah, I don't think people here or nationally really grok how far ahead Tatum is as a playmaking engine.
People talk about his left hand or his dribbling, as far as his biggest leap last season. His biggest improvement (by far) was just making the right play/read. The game slowed down just enough for him to be able to toe the line of controlled ultra aggression, which I had all but given up on ever happening tbh lol.
