Before I get started on this edition, I just wanted to say that the NBA players are more than just athletes. This week, the NBA community saw what great leadership is in the league as it stands up to centuries of systemic racism in this country. Jaylen Brown drove 15 hours to lead a protest in Atlanta and went to bail out three peaceful protesters who were arrested. It’s not just Jaylen, though. We’ve seen what an amazing human being Karl-Anthony Towns is as he protested during a pandemic that claimed the life of his mother, and we’ve seen dozens of NBA players all out there in protest. Several NBA players have also donated money for the cause, and they’re using their platforms to help people understand the pain involved from racism in America. I’m so proud to be an NBA fan.
Coming into the 2019-20 season, the Boston Celtics made a big bet on Jaylen Brown with a four-year, $115 million extension in October of 2019. Brown wasn’t exactly playing at that high of a level when he signed it, but it was a bet on the 22-year-old wing’s future. After three underwhelming years on the stat sheet and as a fantasy player, Brown took his game to another level with averages of 20.4 points, 6.4 boards, 2.2 dimes, 1.1 steals, 0.3 steals, 2.1 treys and 2.3 turnovers over 34.0 minutes per game on a 49/38/74 shooting line. Here are the rest of his career stats (via NBA.com, all stats via NBA.com unless noted):
Excluding blocks, every counting stat was a career high and most of the stats were still better per minute even with his hefty per-minute boost. Brown also had a massive 3.0 usage rate boost from 2018-19 to 2019-20, and he shattered his career-high TS% at 58.9 in 2019-20 (was 56.2 in 2017-18). Brown also went from 154th per game in points leagues for 2018-19 to 56th in 2019-20.
Brown did have his most injury-plagued season of his NBA career in 2019-20, missing 14 of the 64 games. Here’s a look at his injury history in his career so far.
- Before his rookie year, Brown missed some time in summer league for a hyperextended right knee and needed an MRI. He did return for some July action, though. A sprained ankle in January cost him his first NBA game, and Brown missed three games for a right hip strain.
- In his second season, Brown ran into another July injury with a right quad bruise and the Celtics shut him down this time. He had an eye injury in December, left Achilles soreness kept him out for one just before Christmas, and Brown hurt his ankle and knee on Christmas to keep him out for two games. A concussion cost him six games in March, and he missed a playoff game for right hammy strain.
- In his third season, Brown missed an early November game for right foot soreness, a back/tailbone bruise kept him out for three games, and back spasms kept him out for three more in April.
- This year, an illness kept him out for three, another illness kept him out for one, a right thumb injury kept him out for one in January, a right ankle sprain kept him out for two in January, another right ankle issue kept him out for one in February (also had left ankle issues here), and Brown missed the final four games before the NBA went on hiatus for a right hammy strain.
Not too much here besides two right hamstring strains, and having trouble shaking his back issues in his third year. Some of his injuries looked like they were going to be lengthy ones, but he was back relatively quickly.
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Up until this year, Brown wasn’t very valuable in fantasy. In his rookie year he wasn’t a top-300 player per game in nine-category leagues, he was just 160th in his second season, and he fell to 187 in 2018-19. Despite the slower start to his career in fantasy, Brown launched to a very nice 69th per game in 2019-20. Let’s get into why he got so much better.
The first and obvious increase for Brown was playing time. He saw his minutes fall in 2018-19, but the Celtics losing Marcus Morris was key to Brown getting to 34.0 minutes per game. Prior to this season, coach Brad Stevens had used Brown situationally at times, but in 2019-20 Stevens really locked in on his perimeter rotation. Brown (34.0 minutes), Jayson Tatum (34.6), Gordon Hayward (33.4), Marcus Smart (32.5) and Kemba Walker (31.8) were all consistently getting minutes every night, and the next-closest perimeter player was Brad Wanamaker (19.3). Excluding the opener, Brown played in 27-plus minutes in each game he played in 2019-20, and he hit the 35-minute mark in 46% of his games.
On top of consistent minutes, Brown was getting consistent shots. In 2018-19, he only had 40.5% of his games with a 22-plus usage rate, but 84% of his games had a 22-plus usage rate in 2019-20. Brown also had a 20.5 usage rate in the second half of games during 2018-19, but it increased to 24.5 in 2019-20 -- a 61.2 TS% in the second half for 2019-20, too. Considering Brown’s teammates are high-volume guys like Tatum and Kemba, that’s some pretty encouraging offensive output.
For fantasy players who really don’t dominate in a particular category for fantasy, they have to be efficient in the percentages. As mentioned above, he increased his TS% by a whopping 4.2% in 2019-20. Here’s a look at his performance on shots at the rim, how frequently he shot from there, volume on mid-range shots, volume on above-the-break treys, and his efficiency on jumpers.
He really improved on shots at the rim in 2019-20, and he’s taking more treys from above the break as his career has progressed. The other big takeaway is he really struggled as a shooter in 2018-19, but bounced back nicely.
Looking at his treys, here’s a look at his 3P% on his catch-and-shoot attempts, how often he had catch and shoot, his pullup 3P%, his wide-open 3P%, and the percentage of his treys that came wide open.
He really took a step up on efficiency on his catch-and-shoot shots, and he wasn’t open as much, which is expected with his improvement. Brown still needs to get a little better as a pullup shooter. For what it’s worth, he was decent on pullup twos at 45.2% in 2019-20, and he has really trended up there in his career (30.5% as a rookie, 37.3%, 40.3% in 2018-19). Sometimes guys can take their pullup twos out to beyond the arc, so maybe it’ll be Brown next year.
Driving to the basket is usually a PG thing, but there’s some interesting info on Jaylen’s drives over his career.
He is clearly driving to the basket more with his drives per minute going up, and he’s been able to score more off that, too.
One reason why Brown was so much better was because of Kemba Walker. Brown’s scoring per minute didn’t really alter when Kemba was out there, and that’s because he had a sterling 61.2 TS% when he played next to Kemba (56.3 TS% with). With Kyrie Irving in 2018-19, Brown was decent at 56.7 TS% (53.2 TS% with). With Kemba and Jaylen locked up (and likely Tatum soon), they should be able to grow together and get better.
One of the main reasons Brown wasn’t able to be valuable in fantasy before this year was because he was a bad foul shooter, failing to hit 70% in any of his first three seasons. In his previous two years, Brown made just 62.8% of his free throws on the road, but he increased that to 74.5% on the road in 2019-20. He also shot 64.0% in the second half over the previous two seasons, but had a huge boost to 81.0% in 2019-20. A lot of guys who had struggled at the line over a decent span struggled on the road, so it’s encouraging to see he was vastly improved there.
Brown wasn’t too productive in the defensive categories, and his steals per minute also dropped. His steals per minute actually took a bit of a hit in 2019-20. Brown had 2.2 deflections per game in 2019-20, which is up from 1.6 in 2018-19. He was at 2.3 deflections per 36 in each of the last two seasons, so he had a little bit of bad luck in 2019-20. Maybe he can get a little better next year.
Brown’s stats in 2018-19 may have fallen off a bit because he was more of a defensive stopper. Prior to 2018-19, he was more of an off-ball guy, but shifted to being an on-ball guy more often in 2018-19. If you’re into data, here’s a graph of Jaylen’s versatility over his career compared to others in the league (via Krishna Narsu on Twitter; he’s a great follow, by the way):
It’s kind of nice to see he went from being a point-of-attack guy to an off-ball wing in 2019-20. That may help explain why he blossomed into a much better offensive player.
If you play fantasy strictly to win, then the “fun to own” factor isn’t really important to you. For most of us, fantasy is more enjoyable when the players on our teams are easy to root for. Besides Brown being the most impactful NBA player in protests so far, he’s just an amazing human. Being from Atlanta, he went to Cal because of academics, and he’s such an intelligent person. As Celtics play-by-play man Sean Grande points out, you will be proud of Brown’s play on the court, but “ nothing...nothing...compared to what he accomplishes off it.” He’s just a great role model to any person and he will bring change to this country one day. I also just wanted to point out a couple of my favorite Jaylen tweets:
This was the tweet before his first NBA game. It’s a common first move for a game of chess, and Brown was in the chess club at college.
Of course, Brown has one of the GOAT tweets:
2014. Legend.
There are a lot of reasons to think that Brown’s impressive improvement is for real. He is still going to be just 24 when the 2020-21 season starts back up, and his Celtics figure to compete for a homecourt advantage in the first round of the playoffs next year. Ideally in drafts, you can get some point guards and bigs early, and maybe you can find a spot for Brown on your team in the sixth round.
