He did exactly what everyone was calling for him to do, which led to a great 2nd half. He doesn't have the handle to dribble through traffic, he's not a great facilitator on the drive so the Heat know exactly when he starts his gather they can swarm. But adding in the stop short stepback J gave him room to get off a shot, and it really helped his drives.
He could do worse than to work on some of the drills in Pritchard's daily routine.
25 is still very young with players not completely physically or def not BBIQ mature yet. I have the peak age to be 28-29 for most players.
That's fair. Possibly I'm over-baseballizing this, because improving BBIQ does happen past 25 for sure.
Correct, and I’d argue that Jaylen has already proven himself to be an outlier.
One thing that we do know is that he’s always been a straight line driver with a slow handle. This has been overshadowed by his first step, athleticism and other offensive abilities but against elite playoff level defensive pressure he needs to recognize adjustments need to be made. Same goes with Tatum which goes back to when I’ve been saying all weak about youth getting swallowed up in the playoffs until they’ve reached their peak with a small pct of outliers. Those outliers don’t necessarily have to be elite players but the most mature high IQ players who can quickly adapt (Vincent for example and even Pritchard to a degree but he’s really limited at this level).
25 is young but most players are what they are around 25, minus the incremental improvements. Those incremental improvements add up over a span of 3-4 years though, so you get the peak age of 28-29.
In the first angle it really looks like a shove, but I think it looks less like a shove in the second angle. Looks like the defensive player is switching his attention and voluntarily moving towards Brown.
I mean, Jaylen already improved his ballhandling quite a lot. But that’s early career.
Re the bolded, I also typically struggle with the word mental but I think its appropriate here. While he can and will certainly benefit from pure dribbling drills, the game slowing down for him on both ends seems to offer the most room for improvement. He's obviously exceptionally bright and dedicated but those two things can also exist in a young man who sometimes struggles to maintain focus. That might continue to develop with time. I think the combo of better decisions/focus + better handles could generate another real bump.
I don't think Brown really has a good comp because very few players of his profile actually work out to this extent.
My sense (completely unsupported) is that lots of players incrementally improve their handle in the sense of tightening it so that they are less turnover prone. Meaningful changes in what a player can do with their dribble are much less common. In other words, if people are hoping for Jaylen to be a guy who breaks defenders down off the dribble to create step back threes or open driving lanes, that’s pretty unlikely to happen. But I think most of us aren’t asking for a fundamental change but just a tightened handle while executing the same types of quick burst straight line drives Jaylen currently lives off of. That is something he should be able to improve because it’s an incremental rather than transformative change.
Jaylen is one of those guys that hangs when he’s in the air and seems to somehow elevate more midair, like a second jump. This pic, if you look at it, looks like he’s going to separate his shoulder on the rim lol. But he gets that last second boost.
Jackson Frank is great - thank you for posting. It directly addresses some of the criticisms of Brown's play during the playoffs on the pages of this very thread.
The improvement wouldn’t necessarily have to come with his handle but in his decision making to not expose himself to so many of these situations. If Jaylen had more experience against this level/intensity of defense he would have a better understanding of when to attack/not attack and when to be more aggressive with the ball/when to be more protective. This all ties into what I’ve been preaching about how young players are more volatile in performance the bigger the stage without the experience or without yet learning from failure on how these big stages play.
I mean, he’s had a ton more experience in this department than most 10-15 year vets. He’s been to the ECF 4 times and lost 3, including one just 2 years ago. He’s had the reps. He’s had the failure. Time for the lessons to start sticking better.
By my count, he lost 3 in his first 4 years and is currently playing his 4th. Not that it really takes away from your larger point, but feels like bad juju not to edit...
I don’t disagree. Some players get up to speed on this area right away (Vincent for ex
while others sometimes never do or do so at a slower pace. Some of his decisions have been downright cringe worthy in this series but overall he’s played pretty awesome.
Agreed. Even if this is the fully baked JB, he’s still a really good player. If he fixes some of these recurring issues…he can be really, REALLY good.I don’t disagree. Some players get up to speed on this area right away (Vincent for ex
I like the article, but holy shit that site. Every video started auto playing for me at the same time when the page loaded up.
I do think it makes a difference for Tatum and Brown that only the last 2 seasons has that experience involved it being THEIR team. Jaylen's first ECF was as a rookie getting 15 mpg off the bench while the Cavs gentlemen swept the IT Celtics after IT went down. The 2018 Cinderella run does make it feel like they've been knocking on the door forever. But even in the bubble, though they may have been the better players, they still had veterans Kemba and Hayward playing 30 minutes and "leading" the team.
His writing feels really try-hard with his use of a thesaurus. Sometimes it is OK to use simple language.
Had the same thought. Pretty good analysis, but the writing - get thee to Strunk and White.
While spending the other 90% of the article talking about how really fucking good he's been.
For your secondary scorer, it's hard to do better than a guy putting up 24/game on efficient shooting with a couple turnovers a game and some assists mixed in. Particularly when, as you said, he punishes mismatches.
He was actually good at the line in game 6 - until he got there 99-99 with the game on the line and missed both. He was 7 of 9 overall in that game. In game 7 he was 7 of 8.
Any idea when/where this pic was taken?Jaylen was awesome this series, for the most part he was exactly what you want in a second guy. Also just came across this, from way before they teamed up here.
