Constructing the Second Pillar — What Can Jaylen Brown Add to His Game Next Season? — Part 2

In my imagination Jaylen Brown is a video game character. Ok, he actually is a video game character because the NBA 2k series exists, but you know what I mean. We often hear that progression is not linear and players can look worse before they look better. This is very often the case. Tatum notably took a huge dip in efficiency and comfortability in his second season when he was asked to spread his wings on offense a bit. He exploded into an all-nba 3rd teamer the next season. But Jaylen? He just gets better at something every… single… season. First it was catch and shoot possessions, then it was his handle, then it was finishing, and last year it was his playmaking that took a huge jump. He is the main character of a Role Playing Game.

In a lot of Role Playing Games, your character has skills, and they can improve those skills as they are used more, or as your character levels up. Many players will focus on a particular skillset that they want to increase for a particular section of the game or to achieve a certain character type. This is Jaylen Brown. He is slowly, season by season, building himself into a superstar. I don’t think he’s going to slow down anytime soon.

As I wrote in Part 1, I think there are two very obvious and achievable additions, or fixes, to Jaylen’s game that can catapult him into a different type of player. The first will be the addition of his running mate Jayson Tatum’s number 1 weapon, the pull up three. The second, by unpopular demand, will be him reducing his turnovers. There has been lots of noise about Jaylen improving his playmaking, but I think he’s gotta reduce the turnovers, especially in the pick and roll, before he can take an affirmative step as a better playermaker. I stand by that, also I already wrote Part 1, it’s too late to go back! Away we go.

Pull Up Shoot, Jaylen Brown

As I highlighted in Part 1, Jaylen is not very good at pullup 3s right now, but I think it’s useful to compare him to a guy who bases his entire offensive game around that shot, Tatum. Below is a chart of their % on all “pull up” type 3 point shots.

Seeing it side by side like that makes it pretty glaring that we are talking about two fundamentally different players, at least last season. To put a finer point on it, Jaylen made 33 unassisted 3pt shots last year, Tatum made 100. Tatum uses his pull up as a weapon to open up everything he does on the pick and roll, and it’s extremely effective. Look at how he gets defended on this play, specifically, look at how his guy fights over the screen and TT’s guy comes up to hedge/soft trap. His pull up game is such a weapon that you can’t lazily switch because he can get it off against bigs so easily, and you definitely can’t play drop like Vuc does on this play.

I know what you’re thinking, here’s Spooney again slobbering all over Tatum when he said he’s writing about Jaylen. Partially true (he’s so good x4), but the comparison is enlightening. A side by side of their shot chart really highlights the difference in how they use it as a weapon.

Jaylen is far more explosive with the ball in his hands and his first step is lightning. Yet Jaylen gets defended like a less dangerous player because he isn’t nearly the threat to pull the trigger with the ball in his hands. This is especially important when he’s operating on the pick and roll where he can be forced right and his shot profile can be limited. Many times instead of pulling up, he knifes into the lane for one of those difficult mid range jumpers I discussed in Part 1. They went in the first half of the year, then they stopped. You cannot lose Tatum behind a pick from anywhere, that’s not the case for Jaylen, and it makes his life much more difficult and ultimately limits his options as a pick and roll ballhandler. This will become important when we talk turnovers.

You’ve probably noticed from the chart that Jaylen is actually pretty solid shooting pull ups on the left side of the court, unless you are colorblind like my uncle Gary. If that’s the case, take my word for it. It’s actually very common for right handed shooters to be more comfortable shooting pull ups going left. It’s easier to transfer the ball to your shooting pocket and get into a rhythm when the ball is in your offhand. During my playing days, I only shot pull ups going left. They never went it, but man did it feel more comfortable. The film completely bears this out. One unique thing about Jaylen’s pull up game is his feet. Pay careful attention to his feet in all of these clips, especially when we get to the pull ups with him going right. His feet are far more secure and balanced when he’s pulling up off a lefty dribble than his dominant right hand.

Alright, this first play has Jaylen operating a pick and roll on the left side of the court with Theis (RIP big fella, he may be “playing” in Houston, but if a game is never televised, is it actually played?). He takes a nice hard left handed dribble, Theis catches Gordon with the pick, and poor ass Vuc is in drop coverage without a prayer to contest. Bottom of the net. He does a goofy little back leg kick in mid air, but that’s not too bad. The shot looks very much like his catch and shoot form with just a slight lean to due to momentum.

Second play is not quite as pretty. He tries to square up coming off the pick, but doesn’t get allllllll the way square, and his feet end up pointing over to Tatum sitting in the corner. Not ideal, but not nearly the worst feet we will see from a Jaylen pull up. It should be no surprise it caroms off the rim.

Last lefty pull up comes at you fast, I apologize, NBA.com’s clip started at that point. For once this isn’t pure incompetence on my part. This one is very similar to the previous play, he’s coming off the pick to the center of the court, actually plants cleanly this time with his feet pointing slightly towards the corner, but he’s up and down nice and straight otherwise. Bottom of the net. When Jaylen has time to square himself up and align his body, he can stroke pull ups. At least going lefty.

Now let’s take a look at some of these right handed shots. Like a few of my exes, and myself, they are ugly.

On this one, Jaylen is running the PnR with Tristan “I suck ass” Thompson. Look at where his feet end up! He’s got a foot all the way out on the other side of TT, and he’s halfway to a split! What the fuck Jaylen? Hell, he almost hurts himself he lands so awkwardly. You may not believe this, but it doesn’t go in.

This second play the complete opposite happens. The only commonality is he’s running the pick and roll with someone who is useless offensively (sorry Grant). He comes off the pick, gets almost zero pressure from the big (remember this) and fires off an ugly ass three. Look at his feet on this one, they practically land on each other. Inconsistency be thy name. Oh yeah, he bricked the shot.

This last play looks pretty similar to the first clip. He’s trying to line up Ben Simmons in semi transition and looks like he’s pumping his legs midair in an attempt to fly. They come in, they fly out so far that he lands on like the side of his feet. Almost hurts himself again. Brick.

It’s impossible to become a consistent shot maker off the bounce if you don’t have consistency in your form, top to bottom. Contrast the wackiness of Jaylen’s lower half with this entire fucking montage of Tatum pull ups compiled by the legend /u/Timi. Look at how he gets square and his feet are stable and under him from the time he shoots to his landing. There’s no splits or heels clacking together like he’s wearing ruby red slippers. Sure there is slight variation to compensate for momentum, but for the most part, every shot looks identical. Jaylen can do this, it just takes repetition and discipline, something he’s got in spades.

So why does making this shot matter so much that I’d spend this much damn time writing about it? It’s not just because he will score more if he makes more shots. That’s true and pretty fucking obvious. More importantly, or maybe just as importantly, take a look at how he’s defended on those plays compared to that clip of Tatum. Jaylen has all the space in the world to get to his pull up other than that last one against Simmons, and that’s not off a pick like the others. Defenses do not care if he takes them, and so far they’ve been right to dare him to do so. If you can make a pull up behind a pick, like Tatum so often does, it stretches the big man way up the floor. That opens things up for the big to roll, bait the big into a switch, or split the help and get into the paint. Once he gets there, there’s not pressure from the picker’s man because you are already by him, he’s no longer waiting in the paint for the drive. Instead, the help has to fly in from the weak side. You know what that does? Makes reading the defense much, much easier because there’s less bodies and it simply takes longer for help to arrive. Reading the game is something Jaylen struggles with mightily right now, and this shot could turn it to easy mode, which brings me to my second point.

Jaylen Brown, Man Without a Plan

As I laid out in Part 1, Jaylen simply has to cut down his turnovers if he wants to elevate his game to the next level. With both the Jays on the Court, the Cs’ net rating was a respectable 2.8. With just Tatum, no Jaylen, their net rating was an even better 3.3. With Jaylen but no Tatum, a markedly worse .5. Right now, Tatum is the type of player that can prop up any lineup and get it playing above average basketball, Jaylen is not that guy.

One of the key reasons is Tatum’s ability to function as the fulcrum of the offense and not constantly turn the ball over. Jaylen is far too turnover prone when he’s asked to handle the ball, especially in the pick and roll. He’s an incredibly dynamic and aggressive attacker, but when that gets cut off, my guy has a worse plan than the Germans fighting a war on two fronts.

I made a super cut of some of his bad and avoidable turnovers from last season. He needs to cut out the dumb shit like stepping out of bounds (no team does this more, I swear it’s like the Bruins and having too many men on the ice) and traveling, but what really worry me are plays like this, or this, or this. These are all plays where Jaylen is doing what he does best, getting into the paint. That’s good, what isn’t good is that once he’s cut off he has absolutely no idea what to do next. It leads to horrid passes that aren’t anywhere close to his teammates. Like that first play against the Hornets, where is he going? What does he think that drive is going to accomplish? He’s surrounded by three guys, picks up his dribble and jumps. The only thing he can do is literally pass it to the other team.

I think this is a function of him not reading the floor well, he doesn’t understand at a high level how much pressure, or how little pressure, he’s putting on a defense. He dribbles himself into trouble and there’s just… nowhere to go with the ball. These are egregious examples, but let’s look at a more subtle failing. On this play he blows by MPJ and gets all the way to the paint. Green comes over to help and by that time Jaylen is completely out of control. He needs to sneak in front of MPJ and put him in jail (aka slam his booty into his MPJ’s grundle, which he does sometimes and is very effective when he does so), so he can maintain his dribble and stay in control. This is a different type of play, but watch how in control Tatum is here once he gets the defender behind him. Jaylen instead literally leaps out of bounds. He has to know that the help came from Nesmith’s guy in the corner, so the help will come down to Nesmith (Murray in this case), which means someone at the top of the key will be open. The problem is that he’s so out of control, he sees Nesmith open for a second and slings it to him because he doesn’t have a plan once he’s in the paint. He’s reacting, not anticipating. It’s an easy pick for Murray. Kemba was really good at making similar forays into the paint work because he very often would kick to the top of the key Kemba knew where the help was rotating to and anticipated it. That’s high level stuff that Jaylen just doesn’t have in the bag right now.

Here he is coming off a double screen (shout out TT for the half assed screen, God he was so bad). He takes a nice hard dribble into the paint and draws like 4 people. Yet again, he picks up his dribble and reads the help wrong. Campazzo has crashed in from the weakside so Kemba is open. Murray never leaves Semi. Jaylen passes basically right to Murray and we are going the other way.

These types of turnovers aren’t just possession killers, they are run creators for the other team. I can live with Jaylen getting offensive fouls when he’s driving hard. I can live with him passing it too hard to the open man, or throwing it out of bounds because the read was right, but he just fucked up the pass. That’s ok, what isn’t ok is constantly getting into the paint without a plan and literally passing the ball to the other team. He really needs to clean up his pocket passes as well. I watched maybe 50 or so of Jaylen’s turnovers, a handful of them were bad/predictable pocket passes. That’s not good enough if he wants to prop up lineups without Tatum. Jaylen is strong and his handle has improved a lot. He can “put guys in jail” whenever he wants, and I’d like him to play off of two feet more. He’s unstoppable when he drives hard and takes a jump stop. It gives him a second to breath and read the defense, and he’s so crafty and athletic that he often can just finish.

Jaylen Brown 3rd Team All-NBA

Ultimately, I feel extremely dirty and sad picking out the negatives in Jaylen’s game like this. He is already one of the brightest young stars in the game, and I fully expect him to add to his bag this offseason. His work ethic and introspection into his own weaknesses are such that I’ve never been more confident in a player’s ability and desire to improve. The best part about the two things I’ve identified is that the improvement compounds. If his pull up three starts to fall, defenses will have to guard him differently and give him even more attention. That makes passes and reads simpler, and as he ages he will naturally read the game better. His running mate already benefits from this added attention, if you start having to guard both of them with 2 guys, I’m confident even Tristan Thompson could be a useful player on offense, and that is saying something. Either way, can the season just start already?

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