Jaylen or Tatum?

If the Celtics could only keep one of them, who would you prefer that they keep?

  • Jaylen Brown

  • Jayson Tatum


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nighthob

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right but the sheer number of metaphorical blows to his head matter. Quantity has a quality all its own. Not going over the tax threshold next year would make a difference, in deferring repeater status by a year. But given paying a 3, 4, even 5x multiple on the overage, I'm not thinking about lowering AAV or anything like that, I'm thinking about having him take more before his FA hits, in order to get him for less than the max in the years when every dollar saved is more like saving $5. Doesn't sound like that's possible unless we're under the cap.
It's not possible period. In order for a player to become a free agent before his rookie contract is done, the team holding him has to decline his option. Declining that option ends the Bird Rights and makes him an unrestricted free agent. Meaning that any team could sign him and Boston would need sufficient room for a max deal. And they wouldn't be able to outbid other teams because they would no longer have Bird Rights.

So, even if they did have the room to sign a max deal, it still makes zero sense to make him an inrestricted free agent because then every team with max cap space could bid on him and Boston would have zero advantage in any signing.
 

TripleOT

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Especially at the end of Game 6, Jaylen gave us a little look of what he's going to be when he presses his offense. Once the refs give him the respect other veteran slashing scorers get, he's going to get a lot of FTs. Hopefully he can get his accuracy to the 80 percent level at the line.

I'd like to see Brown and Tatum put monster games together in the same game.
 

the moops

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Hopefully he can get his accuracy to the 80 percent level at the line.
I think this is highly unlikely, but who knows In looking at a list of under 22 year olds who have shot as many free throws as he has, and shot below 66% in that time, it is a mixed bag. A bunch of dudes all stayed bad - Rondo, Dwight Howard, Austin Rivers, Nurkic, and a bunch of other bad shooting centers. But there are a few glimpses of hope in Trevor Ariza, Al Jefferson, Baron Davis, Bernard King - all who improved immensely and got up to the 80% for several years of their career.
 

mauf

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I think this is highly unlikely, but who knows In looking at a list of under 22 year olds who have shot as many free throws as he has, and shot below 66% in that time, it is a mixed bag. A bunch of dudes all stayed bad - Rondo, Dwight Howard, Austin Rivers, Nurkic, and a bunch of other bad shooting centers. But there are a few glimpses of hope in Trevor Ariza, Al Jefferson, Baron Davis, Bernard King - all who improved immensely and got up to the 80% for several years of their career.
He shot 75% post the UK trip, and 78% between the trip and his concussion. And there seemed to be a change in his approach roughly coincident with that trip.

Maybe we’ll look back and see this as shameless cherry-picking of SSS stats, but I think there’s more reason to be hopeful relative to your average guy who’s shooting 66% from the line through his first two seasons in the league.
 

TripleOT

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Karl Malone shot 48% and 60% his first two seasons in the league, and ended up with a 74% career percentage, and the most FTs in NBA history
 

Reverend

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Are there any prevailing or accepted or plausible theories of what brings improvement in FT shooting? Like, do some forms of shooting, body types, whatever, form preconditions for improvement or... so we just not know?

Because I have to figure that to the extent it's a function of work, Jaylen will put it in. But I wonder what else it depends upon.
 

amarshal2

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With Jaylen it looks like he just can’t get confident in his stroke. For some guys it’s just an odd distance where they can’t get extension and the muscle memory is weird. He doesn’t have this problem on threes. With free throws, he doesn’t miss left/right at a high rate to my eye but he misses short/long A LOT.

I think if he fixes it, it’ll be night and day like a switch. He may not fix it, however.

If in 1-2 years it’s not fixed, he should try granny style/underhand.
 
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Eddie Jurak

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Are there any prevailing or accepted or plausible theories of what brings improvement in FT shooting? Like, do some forms of shooting, body types, whatever, form preconditions for improvement or... so we just not know?

Because I have to figure that to the extent it's a function of work, Jaylen will put it in. But I wonder what else it depends upon.
I think it depends. It's no mystery why someone like Shaq struggled - he couldn't shoot. For a good outside shooter like Jaylen, it is much harder to say.
 

Devizier

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Are there any prevailing or accepted or plausible theories of what brings improvement in FT shooting? Like, do some forms of shooting, body types
Well big men are definitely worse at shooting free throws. This isn't just an NBA phenomenon, you can find links here describing the phenomenon in WNBA and college players.

One of the prevalent explanations is that bigs just don't practice shooting to the same degree as guards and wings, and that's definitely true. But there is an actual physical component, since a tall player's release point is closer to even with the basket. That means that generally (but not always) their free throws will have less arc on them.

Obviously, this all has nothing to do with Jaylen. I'm assuming his issues are mental, in which case it should improve with experience.
 

TripleOT

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Maybe fast twitch type players like Jaylen have trouble ramping down to get calm enough to make a high percentage of FTs.
 

JCizzle

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Maybe fast twitch type players like Jaylen have trouble ramping down to get calm enough to make a high percentage of FTs.
That's what he said was the biggest hurdle - just taking the time to take a breath and get calm. I'd be interested to see his home/road FT splits from the playoffs, I'm guessing he's been way worse on the road which gives credence to a metal block not mechanical.
 

InstaFace

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If in 1-2 years it’s not fixed, he should try granny style/underhand.
One of these days, somebody will be the one to say "I don't care about ego, I don't give a shit if other teams' players make fun of me, I want to do whatever will help the team win the most" and actually mean it.
 

DJnVa

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That's what he said was the biggest hurdle - just taking the time to take a breath and get calm. I'd be interested to see his home/road FT splits from the playoffs, I'm guessing he's been way worse on the road which gives credence to a metal block not mechanical.
Nope.

Back of envelope:
Home: 15/26 57.7%
Road: 17/24 70.8%
 

Time to Mo Vaughn

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Are there any prevailing or accepted or plausible theories of what brings improvement in FT shooting? Like, do some forms of shooting, body types, whatever, form preconditions for improvement or... so we just not know?

Because I have to figure that to the extent it's a function of work, Jaylen will put it in. But I wonder what else it depends upon.
He should probably try shooting underhanded.
 

Reverend

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One of these days, somebody will be the one to say "I don't care about ego, I don't give a shit if other teams' players make fun of me, I want to do whatever will help the team win the most" and actually mean it.
Has anyone tried a fake first-step turnaround fallaway FT before?
 

Eddie Jurak

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One of these days, somebody will be the one to say "I don't care about ego, I don't give a shit if other teams' players make fun of me, I want to do whatever will help the team win the most" and actually mean it.
Malcolm Gladwell did a whole episode on his podcast about this.
 

nighthob

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One of these days, somebody will be the one to say "I don't care about ego, I don't give a shit if other teams' players make fun of me, I want to do whatever will help the team win the most" and actually mean it.
In fairness despite its reputation for awesomeness, in the days that players regularly shot them underhanded free throw shooting was ... Shaqesque.

Sure, Rick Barry was great at it. But not so much the rest of the NBA. It might help bigs that struggle by getting more arc on free throws, but it’s not a cure all.
 
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Eddie Jurak

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In fairness despite its reputation for awesomeness, in the days that players regularly shot them underhanded free throw shooting was ... Shaqesque.

Sure, Jerry West was great at it. But not so much the rest of the NBA. It might help bigs that struggle by getting more arc on free throws, but it’s not a cure all.
Rick Barry, you mean?
 

Devizier

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In fairness despite its reputation for awesomeness, in the days that players regularly shot them underhanded free throw shooting was ... Shaqesque.

Sure, Jerry West was great at it. But not so much the rest of the NBA. It might help bigs that struggle by getting more arc on free throws, but it’s not a cure all.
It effectively increases the distance between the ball and the basket and involves a completely different shooting form. I can see why it's not widely practiced.
 

Reverend

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It effectively increases the distance between the ball and the basket and involves a completely different shooting form. I can see why it's not widely practiced.
I think the theory is that there are fewer moving parts, so it should be more easily mastered.

I don't know if this theory has ever been studied, though--like, if you taught a three year old, yes this would probably work. But later in life? I dunno.
 

nighthob

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In practice players used to shoot free throws underhanded. And NBA FT%s were horrific. As players stopped doing it the percentages increased.

There could be many reasons for this, one having to master two different shooting forms just might cause players to focus on the important one (the jump shot) and not so much the secondary form, which caused lower free throw percentages overall. Hard to say other than that leaguewide FT% has remained around 75% since the early 70s.

The one exception was the late 90s when expansion finally caught up to the NBA and, interestingly enough, there were two players that actually had a giant impact on aggregate FT%. Shaq and Duncan (who used to be terrible every other year). If I recall correctly there was one year when the two of them lowered the league FT% by nearly four points.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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it used to be said that guys with large hands have problem with the necessary mechanics.

I think Jaylen' FT stroke is too long. Compare it to JT's where he gets it to his shooting pocket and does a quick release and it's in. The more moving parts, the more things can go wrong.

there's a ton of stuff on the internet about shooting, stuff i wish I could have seen when I was young.
 

NomarsFool

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Honestly, I can barely remember what Tatum looked like before this past season because this past season - I was pretty disappointed. A lot of dribble between the legs, fall away 18 footers. His 3P% seemed to be pretty inconsistent. I thought he helped out with rebounding quite a bit and had a few blocks here and there. Occasionally he was taking it to the basket, so he has shown he can do it. Overall, I think Jaylen's game is more complete - better true shooter, great first step and drive to the basket. His turnaround 8-12 foot jumper seems undefensible. I also think he could grow into a truly elite defender.
 

BaseballJones

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If you had a guy who, as a mostly 20 year old, in just his second NBA season, average 15.7 points, 6.0 rebounds, and shot 37.3% from three.... most of us would be thrilled at that. Tatum isn’t an MVP-caliber talent but he’s a perennial all-star talent that is just in the beginning stages of his career.
 

bigq

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I think the question is which of the two has better upside/higher ceiling. In my mind that is Tatum but I’m not truly certain about that.

In terms of offense I think Tatum has the potential to be the better high volume scorer and he shares the ball better and has better assist rates than Brown. I do agree that Brown currently has the better first step.

Brown is probably better defensively based on the eye test however their steal rates are basically the same while Tatum has more blocked shots.

Overall I am still leaning Tatum but frankly I really enjoy watching both players grow and develop and hope I can continue to watch both in a Celtics uniform for years to come. Both are great picks by Danny.
 

DJnVa

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Honestly, I can barely remember what Tatum looked like before this past season because this past season - I was pretty disappointed.
He increased his assists/36 by about 33%, his rebounds by about 10%. As far as his shooting, he essentially took 2 extra 2 pointers per 36 minutes, hitting 1 of them, and 1 extra 3 pointer, and missed it.
 

the moops

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I actually found Tatum's entire year to be frustrating to watch. The drives to the basket where he uses his off arm to push off, the step back mid range with 15 seconds on the shot clock, the inconsistent defense, etc. I also felt that way about Jaylen, so perhaps they aren't that different, but I was expecting more out of Tatum.
 

TripleOT

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Someone needs to buy Tatum the book Sprawlball. All those two point jumpers are garbage. Tatum needs to stop taking 1990s advice from Kobe and Hardenize his game.
 

lovegtm

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Someone needs to buy Tatum the book Sprawlball. All those two point jumpers are garbage. Tatum needs to stop taking 1990s advice from Kobe and Hardenize his game.
Fewer pump fakes from 3 to step into long 2s would be nice. But to play devil's advocate: Tatum doesn't have a great first step. If he made himself into an elite mid-range shooter in the Kawhi mold, a ton of drives would open up for him. That's an incredibly tall order, but it's not out of the question.

We've seen a lot in these playoffs how useful it is to have a player who can hit mid-rangers at a good clip when the games slow down and points per possession drop against locked in defenses. It's a lot harder for regular season 3-point success to translate when defenses are flying around and closing out hard. Portland and Toronto only advanced because CJ and Kawhi were able to get 2-pointers in some real rockfight game 7s.
 

BaseballJones

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Jaylen Brown
2018-19: 25.9 min, 10.7 fga, 46.5% fg, 34.4% 3pt, 52.5% efg, 4.2 reb, 1.4 ast, 0.9 stl, 13.0 pts
Career: 24.4 min, 9.1 fga, 46.5% fg, 36.5% 3pt, 52.7% efg, 4.0 reb, 1.3 ast, 0.8 stl, 11.2 pts

Jayson Tatum
2018-19: 31.1 min, 13.1 fga, 45.0% fg, 37.3% 3pt, 50.6% efg, 6.0 reb, 2.1 ast, 1.1 stl, 15.7 pts
Career: 30.8 min, 11.8 fga, 46.1% fg, 40.0% 3pt, 52.0% efg, 5.5 reb, 1.9 ast, 1.1 stl, 14.8 pts

Per 36 min (2018-19)
Brown: 14.9 fga, 5.9 reb, 1.9 ast, 1.3 stl, 18.1 pts
Tatum: 15.2 fga, 7.0 reb, 2.5 ast, 1.2 stl, 18.2 pts

Tatum is a little bigger, a little better outside shooter. Jaylen is a little quicker, a better athlete, a better defender, and a better finisher.

But their actual on-court production is almost identical. And there is nothing whatsoever wrong with having a 21 and a 22 year old that have only been in the league 2 or 3 years, putting up these kinds of numbers. They're both terrific NBA players right now at this young age. If the Celtics aren't going to get AD, and Kyrie leaves, there's nothing at all wrong with having these two guys take the reins and grow into their vast potential.

I'd actually be pretty excited to see their future. Horford as the steady big man. Time Lord as the up and coming rim defender and lob recipient. Hayward as the veteran shooting presence that keeps everything flowing (unlike Kyrie, he definitely does not need to be the center of attention). Tatum and Brown both averaging around 20 points a game next year. A couple of new draft picks with talent. I can see that happening if Kyrie is gone.
 

Captaincoop

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This was easy six months ago, but in the playoffs Tatum really made me question where his lack of mental toughness puts his ceiling.

Tatum is a real basketball player. Brown is a real athlete.