Jaylen Brown is comfortable in the second unit, but should he start again?

https://www.masslive.com/celtics/2019/03/boston-celtics-jaylen-brown-is-comfortable-in-the-second-unit-but-should-he-start-again.html



Boston Celtics’ Jaylen Brown is comfortable in the second unit, but should he start again?




Updated Mar 3, 5:50 PM;
Posted 4:00 AM
Staff



By Tom Westerholm | twesterh@masslive.com
TORONTO -- In early December, as Boston wing Jaylen Brown prepped for a return to action after a nasty fall two weeks prior, the Celtics were cruising through their first truly positive stretch of the season.

Brown and Gordon Hayward had been replaced by Marcus Morris and Marcus Smart, and the Celtics rattled off eight consecutive wins with the new look -- a lineup that has remained intact through February (with varying degrees of success). Brown, who started the year ice cold with the starters, talked about the possibility of joining the second unit.

“I think coming off the bench, I think people make it a bigger deal than what it really is," Brown said, going on to praise Hayward for accepting and thriving within that role. "At the end of the day, it's basketball.”

Brown said all the right things, but some wondered how he would fare with the second unit, and whether the perceived demotion would mess with his confidence.


The opposite proved true.

Fast forward a few months. In late November, Brown’s shooting from three had cratered to the mid 20s. Since, Brown’s shooting numbers have gone up and down, but he has been an undeniably positive force off the bench.

Now the Celtics are scuffling again, and Marcus Morris’ shooting slump has made him an easy target in the starting lineup. Particularly after Brown’s solid defensive performance against James Harden, the Celtics may need to consider swapping in Brown and bringing Morris back to the bench.

Ask Brown about his rise, and he does everything short of rolling his eyes.

“Everybody wants to ask me about that,” he said recently.

Yeah, sorry. But still though.

“It’s all good.”

Brown’s early issues trickled out in a few different directions.

There was the hand injury, which required a pad on his palm that made shooting difficult. Even Stevens said not enough was made of how the injury affected his game (in fairness, Brown had no interest in talking about it when asked).


Still, Celtics assistant coach Micah Shrewsberry couldn’t help but notice Brown struggling to do simple basketball things like shooting a normal jump shot or catching a pass. Shrewsberry started lobbing the ball to Brown in warm-ups, trying to minimize the impact on the bruise.

“More mentally, but especially with his shot,” Shrewsberry said. “That was one more thing he’s thinking about.”

There was also the matter of fit, which has been picked to death, but remains undeniably important. Coming off a season in which he was one of the top options for an Eastern Conference finalist, Kyrie Irving was now the scorer. Jayson Tatum was now the next anointed one. Hayward needed touches and shots to get back into his rhythm. Brown struggled to find the role expected of him.

“At the start of the season, I think everybody was trying to figure it out as well,” Brown said. “I kind of fell into that process of trying to figure it out. Trying to know where I’m going to get my shots, when’s the right time to shoot it. It never felt like it was the right time to shoot it in that first unit.


“I wasn’t a focal point of the offense. And that’s not a knock or a diss to anybody. I just wasn’t.”

Stevens didn’t think the issues were exclusive to Brown, although the third-year wing certainly felt the effects.

“This group plays the game the right way,” Stevens said. “We were more worried about stepping on each other’s toes than anything else at the start of the year.”

Whatever the issue, lack of certainty played out in a third way: Brown tried to change himself as a player. Rather than attacking to score, he attempted complicated reads to get others involved and picked his spots seemingly at random.

Brown, perhaps more than other members of Boston’s roster, was handed a difficult task: Play within the offense, but be yourself, even though last year, Brown’s “self” was the team’s second-highest scorer in the postseason.


“You can’t change who you are,” Shrewsberry said. “You can change the decisions you make, but you can’t change who you are as a player. You can’t make it up over a short amount of time. … Sometimes, it takes people longer to make those changes, to make those small tweaks.”

So Brown and the Celtics set about making the tweaks. Brown ran sets with assistant coaches. He jumped in with Hayward, Semi Ojeleye and Celtics assistant Scott Morrison to get a better feel for reads in the second unit.

As opportunities became more organic, Brown’s production steadily, and he began to minimize his mistakes.

“You can see his progression from the start of the year,” Shrewsberry said. “He’s gotten much better.”

Brown, of course, still is not in his ideal role. Both he and Shrewsberry said the Celtics see him as an energy guy for the time being, lifting the second unit with defense and transition opportunities. The way Brown has played over the last few games, that computes -- when he’s flying around the court, he’s tough to keep off the floor.


“He looked like me out there, diving for balls and things like that,” Marcus Smart said after Boston’s win over the Wizards. “We need Jaylen to do that every day.”

“That’s kind of what this team needs,” Brown said. “And things change. This team needs different stuff now than it did in the beginning of the year. In the playoffs, it’s going to need different stuff again. Things change. People keep with the same narrative, but things change. The narrative at the end of the season isn’t the narrative now.”

The narrative may have shifted now, with Morris mystifyingly cold from behind the arc. Should Brown return to the starting lineup, given his success with the second unit?

“He’s played a lot, he’s played well and he’s been in at the end,” Stevens said on Sunday. “He’s doing a good job, and the other thing you have to factor in is that he’s doing a good job because he’s comfortable with who he’s playing with. That’s the hard part sometimes.”


In February, Brown said he remains content either way.

“Now in the second unit, second part of the season, now we have more comfortability with each other,” Brown said. “I can start, I can come off the bench, it doesn’t really matter. That’s helped me learn about the game of basketball. The game continues to teach you stuff, no matter what level you play it at. Something new you learn every year. I just continue to learn.”



bob


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More reasons why Jaylen and Smart are my favorite players...

Jaylen Brown is one smart cookie.