Can we pretend this convo didnt happen?
yeah i mean i think he gets the biggest slice of the win pie in the 2nd half, and probably the entire game. but without tatum's huge slice in the first half (he had 20 on solid shooting and no one else had more than 8), the team probably isn't in position to have Brown close it the way he did. i think ive come to conclusion that Brown is more of the team leader/alpha/etc, while Tatum is their best player. Meanwhile I like White and Holiday taking shots in the clutch more than either Jay (or running through KP when he's healthy). TLDR: this team is f'ing loaded and I love them.
Moving this discussion over to here: I think JB still has room to grow. He could become a 5 assist/game playmaking wing. All reports are that that's the thing he's working on relentlessly now, and betting against JB leveling up a skill he focuses on has historically been a losing bet.
That and his defense were declared as things that he wanted to improve on. As you note, when he targets something, his focused hard work has generally produced results.
It's insane just how much and how quickly he improved on what his biggest flaws were coming off the past season. His handles are miles better, as are his passing and court awareness. He always seems to attack with a plan now, and when he gets in a groove and the team starts feeding him the ball he appears to have endless tools to generate offense by himself. Yesterday he had about a five minute sequence in which he hit a corner three, threw down a nasty dunk, got a layup on a drive and then drained a sweet jumper from the top of the key. He's been an incredibly mature player.
Jaylen is a weird player in that he combines extreme athleticism, skill, and high actual IQ with low feel and "BBIQ".
I think, and this is a credit to him, he now just does less of the stuff he doesn't do well and he does more of the stuff he does do well. I don't think he's gotten significantly better at dribbling or passing or creating, he's just not trying to overextend himself as much in those areas. Some of it is likely due to the better surrounding talent, most of it might be him leaning into his strengths, but it's clearly paying off in a big way. Love the way he's playing right now - he's totally within himself, within the flow of the offense, which couldn't always be said in previous years.
I think this is right. He is playing to his strengths as much as can be reasonably expected.
I guess I'm not seeing it. I see a guy who's not trying to be ISOing like Luka anymore and dribble into 3-4 guys. That's completely removed from his game except for specific situations. Instead it's 2-3 dribbles and smart, simple decisions.
Yeah, I am really surprised that anyone would say that he hasn’t improved his decision making and creation skills markedly.
I think the biggest decision he makes every possession is "Don't do too much" and that's the best one he can make. He's absolutely killing defenses when they're in rotation, as a scorer and a passer, rather than trying to ISO his way to points and assists. I'm being very complimentary of him when I say that.
He's initiating far better. It goes way, way beyond "don't do too much." They are relying on him to break down the defense now.
This is a great post.
To add to this, I think the game has really started to slow down for him this year, particularly in the playoffs. Earlier this year, I saw a modest improvement in his offense driven primarily be being more decisive, but it was very mechanical. If seemed like there were more drives that he went into looking to pass, but he wasn’t processing in real time and making judgments based on coverage, he was making an early decision to pass on some drives and then executing that. That was an improvement because it made him less predictable, but it wasn’t game changing.
I think that it would be natural for Jaylen to have a brotherly "rivalry" with Tatum and want to level up his processing to try to keep pace with Tatum's eliteness in that area. It's a great development.
I agree with all of this, as one of the resident Jaylen stans. He didn't end last year well or start this year well either. But he turned things around. And the game slowing down for him was a huge part of it. Joe and staff probably deserve a ton of credit for this, but the kid is a workaholic and put the time in. I think that he has been pushing the top20 for a while and has a path for continued improvement, since some of the grown opportunities for him are things that are mental or fine skills tweaks.
As pointed out in the other thread, this actually isn't true - someone just took JB's + JT's buckets + assists but neglected to factor in their passes to each other.
JB is great and I love seeing him get more and more assists but one big reason why his handles and vision look better is that the court is way more open than it was in the past.
It's funny you mention Jimmy Butler. Because when Brown drew the 6th foul on Luka, it reminded me of Butler's knack for getting calls. Of course, had it been the real Jimmy Butler drawing that foul, the commentators would have fawned over Butler for his "savvy veteran play forcing Luka to foul out" instead of screaming about the injustice of it all.
bingo.
