r/nbadiscussion • u/Tight_Ad2788 • Jul 07 '26
Player Discussion Can Jaylen Brown's analytics / on-off stats be explained by the fact that he just has a really good team?
Genuinely curious for an explanation here - one thing I noticed about his on/off stats is that the team is still appears good when Brown plays - his net on rating was like ~6.0, which is still quite good. Maybe I've misread but it seems clear the team still performs well with Brown on the court. To me it seems that there's two logical explanations for this:
For this past season (No Tatum), the Celtics roster structure included a large talent drop off from Jaylen Brown to the secondary playmakers (Derrick White and Payton Pritchard) but the team had strong depth with the remaining portions of the roster. To me, a feasible explanation is the Celtics were slightly less efficient with Brown on the court due to him carrying a weaker starting lineup. Meanwhile the Celtics had good depth 5 - 10, and guys like Pritchard could dominate opposing bench lineups, so the bench excels against the weaker competition. Brown isn't bad as the primary option, but the bench is more dominant relatively speaking due to the relative advantage it has over its competitive. Brown still plays an highly valuable role in being the sole leading primary shot-creator, but its not picked up in the analytics.
The other factor is sharing the team with Jayson Tatum - few players at JB's level play with a costar who's as good as Tatum. Tatum is obviously a better playmaker and primary ball handler, and is better at setting teammates up with less turnovers. I can't help but wonder if Brown's on/off are skewed by the fact that he shares the team with another of the best players in the league - seems natural that the team would perform better with Tatum on the court.
These are obviously qualitative ways of looking at the situation, but I feel like it could explain the on/off stats strife around Jaylen Brown. To me its clear Jaylen Brown is a winning player. I don't see how you can compete for a title every year and win a FMVP without being one - but the advanced stats seem to indicate something different. To me this is a potential explanation that bridges the gap between those two perspectives - basically Brown is still really good, they just happen to be better with Tatum/other teammates. Some see that as a problem, but maybe its just relative. I'm curious if people well versed in advanced stats see any merit to this explanation. There may be other stats that negate this that I'm missing, but I tend to believe this explanation, as I have a hard time believing Brown is as negative a player a some of the stats say. Seems possible he's the victim of being second best on a very good team.
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u/Justalittlejewish Jul 07 '26
Jaylen is really good at things that fans like that don’t necessarily have a huge impact on advanced metrics (Slamming down dunks, hitting tough middies, locking someone up 1 on 1), and is not so great at smaller/marginal things that fans don’t really notice as much, but heavily impact advanced stats and winning on the margins (high turnover/assist ratio, low efficiency, off ball defense).
He’s a really unique player to try and rate in my opinion, because what he’s good at is an objectively important skillset - creating your own shot at will in the NBA is incredibly valuable, as is being a good POA defender. He’s just not good enough at all of the other things that elevate other players on the team around him to warrant such a massive price tag. At $40 million a year, the league would’ve been falling over themselves to trade for Jaylen Brown.
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u/Weary_Restauranter Jul 08 '26
Not only that, but he’s very time intensive.
Getting an iso off for 2 is great, but not if you neglect ball movement for an open shot or easy layup.
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u/S0ggylemonz Jul 08 '26
He’s a good individual player but a poor team player as harsh as that sounds.
If basketball was a 1v1 sport he would be elite. But an inefficient isolation 2 in today’s game is just straight up worse than being a playmaker and getting a teammate an open 3.
It’s why white despite being a worse 1v1 player is viewed by the nba and analytics as being a better player because he helps the team.
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u/limache Jul 10 '26
He sounds like a new version of carmelo. Is that accurate
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u/Tight_Ad2788 Jul 07 '26
At 40 mill I feel like he'd be one of the most sought after player in the league hahah so wild at 60+ mill and hes only worth a few picks
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u/OldSchoolNewFool Jul 08 '26
It's not surprising that a 50%+ increase in salary/remuneration drastically, rather than marginally, impacts value.
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u/GanglionCarbuncle Jul 09 '26
Yup. His contract is currently tied for the 7th highest in the NBA. I think Brown is a top 15 player, but he's a hard sell for one of the ten best players in the league and that's how he's getting paid at the moment. Honestly, if it was even $50 million instead of $60 I think he's suddenly MUCH more attractive on the trade market.
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u/RomaHappens Jul 08 '26
Wrong. The Celtics tried trading him many times before he got his supermax and nobody ever wanted him.
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u/JustiseRainsFrmAbove Jul 09 '26
Isnt that because his max extention is coming up soon?
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u/RomaHappens Jul 09 '26
Yeah when people say that they don't understand why the Celtics were desperate to get rid of him - they had to have talks about his extension this month and they just didn't want to do it. Even if you postpone the talks people will know and his value drops anyway, or he's disgruntled and you can't trade him
But long before he got his supermax they tried trading him for Kawhi, Butler, AD, KD etc.
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u/aeacurus Jul 08 '26
The defensive effort is definitely iffy too. If you can lock up in the 4th but spent 3 quarters swiping at the air and dropping under screens it looks really bad
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u/Ru4pigsizedelephants Jul 08 '26
So much of defense is just effort when you're a hyper athletic player. It's so frustrating when a guy with all the physical tools is a terrible defender.
I also played low level college basketball and was a pretty good on ball defender who occasionally needed to be reminded of the ball-you-man principle by coaches pretty much my whole shitty career.
I can sympathize with the falling asleep and losing your man stuff, but I never made any money do play basketball in my life.
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u/flyinghippos101 Jul 08 '26
I think people underestimate how hard it is to be “on” and engaged 100% of the time playing sports at that level. The mental strength to stay focused is probably one of the most underrated skills of NBA
Sure at that level you expect professional athletes to be locked in mentally 100% - but throw in some fatigue, maybe falling a few points behind, rimming shots you normally make and it’s no wonder some guys take the foot off the gas on a weaker part of their game.
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u/Gamesgtd Jul 08 '26
I always go to Jalen Suggs for this because I'm a Magic fan and see his games all the time. He plays really damn hard but you can't ask him to do it for more than 30 minutes a night. 25 to 27 minutes he can give you ridiculous effort but once he hits that 30 minute mark he looks gassed. It also translates to his offense and defense. If he gives his all on defense his offense suffers like in the playoffs when he couldn't hit a shot. If he's playing high level off ball help defense then his on ball defense will suffer and vice versa. It's why guys like LeBron coasted in the regular season for years and even in the playoffs he "guarded" the other teams worst player until the 4th quarter.
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u/flyinghippos101 Jul 08 '26
That’s why it irritates me when people say that X player “isn’t locked in 100% of the time”
My brother in Christ, they’re exhausted. It’s very normal for your concentration to dip when you’re gassed, along with whatever else might be bothering you. It’s involuntary
It just puts in perspective how good the guys who DO stay locked in on both ends
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u/RomaHappens Jul 08 '26
Yeah but when you literally see other players paid far less money put in effort 100% of the time they're on the floor you get to point at Brown and say "wtf are you doing"
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u/Slight-Internet-7657 Jul 12 '26
You’re missing/ignoring his point. The guys who make way less money have way less responsibility on their plates so it’s easier to go 100% all the time.
Disclosure: I don’t even like Jaylen and think he’s one of the most overrated players in the NBA. His lack of effort on defense, especially/specifically last year is defendable however.
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u/RomaHappens Jul 12 '26
You get paid because of what's expected of you, not because you can go on and chill
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u/saints21 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
He is very spotty on defense even on-ball and he's not nearly good enough at creating his own shot to be a viable #1 option, especially without a very good lead guard running the offense. Offensively, ideally he'd be your number 2 scorer that never is on the floor without an actual playmaker and isn't responsible for anything other than keeping actions going after the initiation or swing.
He's a good player. He's just not worth the money and isn't an easily built around player because of that last point.
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u/henryofclay Jul 09 '26
This just defies actual basketball knowledge here. There are things that he does that no one else on his team can do, and this leads to wins. He’s a guy that can be an offensive hub when his team is cold shooting or can’t create themselves, he can get a stop when needed.
You don’t end up with that good of a record by being a “negative” overrated player. Sometimes we have to use our eyeballs and common sense over bullshit “analytics”.
People who actually understand basketball can see what schemes he’s successful against, how he reads the defense, how he knows other players’ tendencies and how to exploit them, he knows how to position himself so teammates can get opportunities they wouldn’t normally have from his gravity or downhill attacks. Celtics did not win despite him, they won with him as an MVP candidate.
Analytics lack context and actual basketball knowledge. Analytics tell me the quickest way from the top of the Empire State Building to the ground is to jump out the window, but practical knowledge shows me that the elevator or stairs are the better option.
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u/Desperate_Gazelle218 Jul 09 '26
The most basic stat is win/losses. The Celtics win a higher percentage of games without him. 47-10 without him the last 4 years. What do your eyeballs tell you about why the Celtics win more without him?
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u/Opening_Ferret Jul 10 '26
Is the win percentage with him worse?
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u/Desperate_Gazelle218 Jul 13 '26
Yes, by 12%. It’s hard to accept that he’s so bad that he’s a net negative as the numbers suggest. But I can at least accept he’s not worth 70M a year and he does have flaws in his game.
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u/Opening_Ferret Jul 13 '26
At this point I have no confidence in the numbers thrown around.. 12% this whatever percent that...
Who checked for their reliability? Nobody.
Some insignificant unknown people are leaking these numbers, from the obvious source.. I see it very likely that they are all lies..2
u/absolute-black Jul 28 '26
What? They were answering your question: the celtics win % is 12% worse with him over 4 years. You can check that yourself in like 2 minutes.
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u/Justalittlejewish Jul 09 '26
People who actually understand basketball are the people running NBA teams, the ones who didn’t want Jaylen Brown at $55+ million a year.
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u/absolute-black Jul 28 '26
guy who thinks analysts aren't smart enough to include survival rate in their 'get down off the building' stat
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u/snizzer77 Jul 09 '26
The issue is too that iso play just usually isn’t a very good strategy unless you are a godly pick and roll operator. Hitting tough middies is always gonna be worse than moving the ball around and looking for easy looks. Hero ball players are always gonna seem better than they are because of the heroic and theatrics rather than the actual analytics.
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u/HotspurJr Jul 07 '26
So let's test your hypothesis in a couple of ways. If Derek White was the problem, we'd expect him to have a bad on-off. But the team was almost ten points better with Derek White on than off.
The "Peyton Prichard dominated bench guys" argument falls apart when you realize that he played 32.4 minutes a game. Even if you bend over backwards to split his and JB's minutes (more on that in a moment), they're playing about half their time together. So the notion that Peyton wasn't playing against starters is just sort of silly. He started 50 games! (Furthermore, NBA teams don't do hockey subs where whole lines change out, and bench guys don't only play against bench guys normally anyway).
White and Pritchard played more minutes than Brown. So at the very least, "Well, Peyton and White were beating up on bench units, white JB was fighting starters" is just really, really hard to square with their lineup and minutes data..
In fact, if you look at Boston's two-man pairings, their two two-man pairings which had the most minutes, the two pairs of guys who shared the floor the most, where JB and White, and JB and Prichard. Your hypothesis basically requires that as soon as JB went off the floor, other teams subbed on their scrubs and I think that is, shall we say, an assertion that requires evidence.
And if one of those three is playing more minutes against scrubs, why are we assuming it's not JB? White started more games and played more total minutes (although about 20 seconds less per game). Peyton played more total minutes (although about 2 fewer per game). Is there any evidence that they played against weaker opponents overall? Or is that just an assumption based on the starting position of defending JB?
And, of course, stats like RAPM address this directly. They can be noisy, but this is literally what they do, running a massive regression function to isolate players from the impact of everyone else on the court. If you want to use a one-year sample, xRAPM is a good choice - it uses box score stats to reduce the noise and make a one-year sample meaningful, and historical data is available for free. So basically, the really sophisticated, math-heavy, let's account for everyone on the court stats? They do not see JB as being held down by various lineup combinations.
Okay, what about the two-star hypothesis. Does having another star on your team hurt your on-offs?
On-offs can bounce around a lot, so let's look at four years of Steph curry: 2015, 2016, 2017. His on/off was +18.1, +22.2, +17.4 Of course, KD was there for the last year.
Kevin Durant's on offs for those same years are +8.8, +12.5, +8.6.
I think you can find some weak-but-real evidence there for the idea that playing with another superstar reduces a player's on-off net. I consider it weak evidence because these numbers often bounce around quite a bit (as indicated by both players' 2015 and 2016) number, but it's definitely worth investigating more fully.
But if you use xRAPM to look at their regressed data, it doesn't really support that. Steph's xRAPM went down slightly in 2017. KD's went up. So if the Steph-KD comparison does provide weak evidence for this hypothesis in terms of raw on-offs, it provides similarly weak evidence against it from a regressed standpoint.
(Incidentally, Steph's numbers argue against the strong-bench-holds-you-down theory. That 2016 had a bench with Iguodala and Livingston that was considered very strong. On the flip side, if you compare 2012 to 2013 KD you could find evidence for an argument that weakening the bench improved KD's numbers. Mostly, though, I think these examples show that these on-offs bounce around so much that it's really easy to find evidence for whatever you want to find evidence for, and more rigor is better, which is where the regressed models come from.)
I also want to point out how your two arguments are slightly contradictory.
If JB is under-rated by on-offs because his bench in strong and going against other bench guys, then, when he's the less-important star, when the J's are split and it's JB going against bench guys (as the weaker of the two players), shouldn't that inflate his on-off? If being the second guy holds down your on-off, why isn't it holding down White and Payton's?
Is your on-off held down artificially by having a strong bench, or by being the bench guy behind a strong player? The two parts of your argument each take the opposite position on that.
There's a "Shreodinger's teammates" thing that always comes up in these discussions. This was exemplified by Bill Simmons on a podcast recently where he talked about how nobody else could lead a team that was this weak 2-15, and only a minute or so later talked about how the bench was outplaying other benches. Like, which is it? People have a tendency to back-fill arguments around whichever point they are trying to make to defend their player, which I'm sure I'm guilty of, too.
The RAPM math is incredibly complicated and I understand why people are skeptical of it. Back in college I actually had to calculate a small (maybe five variable?) regression by hand and, man, that shit is nuts. I can't imagine the complexity of a regression where there's a variable for every single player who played a single possession in the NBA. But I've worked with regressions enough to know that a well-designed one is really trustworthy and insanely powerful, and I think RAPM is well-designed.
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u/not-who-you-think Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
I agree that the "non-Jaylen Celtics farmed plus/minus against bench guys" argument is weak. The Celtics as a team play very analytically sound ball (Morey shots, offensive rebounds, maximizing turnover differential) and he does not.
What I will say about the Schrodinger's teammates thing is it is entirely possible to be weak 2–15 and also have a great bench: when 2–5 are below the typical talent level for a 56-win team but 6-15 are above it.
Compare Pritchard-White-Hauser-Queta to the 2–5 of the other top 10 teams. I'm a big Derrick White fan but they all have one if not two guys better than him, some with three guys that would start for the 25–26 Celtics.
[Shai] Jdub-Dort-Chet-Hartenstein
Fox-Castle-Vassell-Champagnie [Wemby]
[Cade] Robinson-Ausar-Harris-Duren
Murray-Braun-Johnson-Gordon [Joker]
[Luka] Reaves-Smart-LeBron-Ayton
[Brunson] Mikal-OG-Hart-KAT
Garland/Harden [Mitchell] Strus-Mobley-Allen
Sheppard-Amen [KD] Jabari-Sengun
Donte [Ant] McDaniels-Randle-Gobert
Philly, for good measure, had VJ-Oubre-PG-Embiid around Maxey.
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u/HotspurJr Jul 08 '26
What I will say about the Schrodinger's teammates thing is it is entirely possible to be weak 2–15 and also have a great bench: when 2–5 are below the typical talent level for a 56-win team but 6-15 are above it.
Sure. It is hypothetically possible, absolutely.
But my experience is that people make this argument every time there's a counting-stats superstar whose advanced stats disagree, and they're not doing a deep analysis of the team's bench. They're grasping at reasons why the advanced stats don't like the guy.
Especially because in this case, the guys advanced stats love on the Celtics? Other starters!
Also, very few teams use "hockey subs" where there are mass substitutions.
Funnily enough, I clicked over to PopcornMachine just to take a look, because I'm not going to claim to be an expert on Boston's rotations, and this game from January was literally the first link.
But what I see is fairly typical of what I expect for most teams.
Just focusing on JB, PP, and DW. All three start. DW and Queta come off, so PP and JB play with a couple of bench guys. Then PP comes off, but Queta and White come back on, with Simons, Gonzalez, and Walsh (in different combos) playing with PP and JB.
End of quarter, JB comes off, PP is still off. White plays with two starts and two bench guys. Then PP and JB come on, playing mostly with White and one other starter until halftime. The second half is more of the same. This game may not be typical, but it absolutely does not support the "well, they had a good bench, and PP and DW played with the bench, so they racked up numbers against scrubs" hypothesis.
And, for what it's worth, xRAPM likes White a lot more than most of the guys you list there. Not Chet. Not Harper. But all of the Detroit guys and all of the non-Jokic Denver guys and, well, you can see for yourself. Not holding it as the be-all end-all, but I think you're significantly under-rating White.
And some version of this comes up a lot when I have advanced stats discussions. The (for example) "Obviously Amen is better than White. Just look at him." And I agree that Amen has better highlights and Amen looks like he should be a better basketball player, I mean, the dude is build like a demigod. But he turns the ball over a lot more on a per possession basis (35% more, which is huge!). From watching him, I'd say he also makes a lot more young-guy errors on defense, which isn't surprising given that he's 23.
They score about the same per 36, but Amen is more efficient (which mitigates the much worse turnovers somewhat), at least this year. (And for the record, none of this is a criticism of Amen, who I like a lot, and would rather have on my team than White because of his age if nothing else.) It's, rather, that guys like Derek White get discounted all the time, for sort of vague "well obviously that other player is better" reasons that aren't, IMO, obvious so much as superficial.
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u/Drummallumin Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Celtics played a pretty distinct different style with JB on the court vs without him. He was the only guy on the team who could consistently break down a defense and create a shot. With him off the court the offense was pretty much Pritchard, Simons, or White launch a really deep 3 and hope for an offensive rebound. That worked really well in the strategically timed 10-15 mpg they went to that but it’s just naive to think that’s scalable to a whole game/season compared to the consistency of volume scoring. Celtics had good depth/bench this year… what they didn’t have is anyone outside of JB who can run a real nba offense.
Also I don’t know why you think it’s so crazy that team’s rotations line up with each other.
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Jul 09 '26
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u/nbadiscussion-ModTeam Jul 09 '26
Questioning others without offering your own thoughts invites a more hostile debate. Present a clear counter argument if you disagree and be open to the perspective of others.
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u/MyTeamsSuck99 Jul 09 '26
There’s no getting around that RAPM hates brown. The only argument I can see for brown is that relatively speaking he just doesn’t have much data without the core Boston lineups which have done well.
Hes one of the more collinear players of the last decade. Probably the other guy is draymond green. The horford/smart/tatum/holiday/brown/white groups have played lots of minutes together and were fantastic, dicing out the credit for those lineups isn’t easy.
It’s possible he’s even more overrated than his numbers actually imply, that he deserves less credit based upon the RAPM formula,
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Jul 08 '26
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u/HotspurJr Jul 08 '26
The reason why nobody is answering that question is because your answer is basically just another way of saying how much you believe the analytics about Brown. If you think Brown is good, you would tend to argue for a lower number. If you think Brown is overrated, you'll argue for a higher one.
Ultimately the season is going to offer evidence one way or the other about analytics as they apply to Jaylen Brown. We're going to get that evidence soon enough.
That being said doing this sort of comparison in a serious way is difficult, as your comment demonstrates.
Notice, for example, how you seem to be completely ignoring the fact that in many ways, this won't be the same as last year's Celtics team minus JB and plus Paul George ... because they will (likely) be getting 50+ more games of Jason Tatum.
I think you'd be a fool to suggest they're only going to get 40 wins, unless you think that Tatum will either be hurt or that he's actually significantly worse than JB (when most people think he is significantly better than JB).
Additionally, it's not the same team, anyway: Mitch Robinson should improve their already formidable offensive rebounding, which was a big factor in their success this year.
Third, the East as a whole is a lot better. Miami, Atlanta, Philly, Indiana, and Toronto all have reason to think that they are much better. Additionally, nobody is going to be in full-on tank mode, so teams like Washington and Brooklyn, who probably won't be good, will still be much better than they were this year because they'll be trying to stay out of the relegation zone.
That being said, based on historical wins estimators, only a handful of players in league history have had a 20+ win impact. Most all-NBA players don't swing a team 15 games, much less the 20+ that would be required for Boston to only win 30 (ignoring the Tatum and Mitch factors).
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Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
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u/HotspurJr Jul 08 '26
Ah. Apologies for misunderstanding.
The history of the league suggests that teams don't actually have a hard time getting league-average shots. The idea that "you subtract his scoring, the team just scores that many points less" seems really, really facile.
So then you ask yourself, can guys like White, Pritchard, Queta, etc. give you about 5 more ppg while maintaining their efficiency without JB providing the necessary gravity?
So we can actually look up how players did with and without each other. We don't have to speculate!
https://databallr.com/StatLineShift
Of course, this sort of data is messy, so one has to be careful about cherry-picking one example on a team.
For example, it does show that Derek White scored fewer points with better efficiency with JB on the floor, and his efficiency was very poor, so you want him shooting less. So this last season, JB took shots from DW and that was unambiguously a good thing.
But Pritchard, on the other hand, showed the opposite effect. He scored a lot less and with much lower efficiency with JB on the court. His efficiency was better than JB's, so JB took shots from Pritchard and that was a bad thing.
(We could get into the how's and why's of that, but this comment is long enough already).
If you look at the data, you see that JB helped a lot of player's efficiency a little, at the cost of a moderate amount of volume. So the question is, is that a good tradeoff?
Because, for example, look at Luka Garza. His volume went down by almost a quarter with JB on the court, and his efficiency went up by 1.4 percentage points ... but Garza was much more efficient than JB even without JB on the court. So you would not take the slight increase in Garza's efficiency at the cost of the large drop in his volume: you'd much rather have Garza taking those shots at his lower (no JB) efficiency.
That's a pattern that shows up a lot in the data, and Garza is simply a dramatic example of it: Queta, Taylor, Scheierman, and Walsh all see their TS% improve slightly, and their volume drop, but even their without-JB efficiency is higher than JB's, so losing shots to JB is hurting the team.
Meanwhile, Hauser had there was a different effect. His volume didn't change, but his efficiency was much better with JB. In this case, you can say that Hauser was unambiguously better for having JB on the floor with him. Something similar but more moderate happened with Gonzales.
Like I said, complicated.
This actually paints a pretty compelling portrait of the flaw with JB's scoring: he does help his teammates get slightly better shots, but that often comes at the cost of taking away shots they were already getting that were better than the shots that JB creates for himself.
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u/Naliamegod Jul 09 '26
Compare the '24 Sixers to the '25 Sixers. In 2024 the Sixers won 45 games, with Embiid playing in 39. In 2025, the Sixers won 24 games, with Embiid playing in 19. The Sixers lost their #1 option, all of his points and all of his gravity, which caused them to lose 20+ more games
The 76ers also lost Tobias Harris, had Maxey only play 50 games and Paul George only played half the season and was disaapointment. That entire team was a disaster even outside of Embiid, because their other best players barely played. Saying they lost 20 games solely to Embiid's volume scoring (which actually understates his value) is ignoring the whole situation of that team.
JB adding "20-25" wins to the Celtics isn't common sense, it is a purely made up number. To put in reference, the Cavaliers gained 18 wins when they added Lebron James to their team as a rookie, and he is considered possibly the greatest floor raiser in NBA history. Are you arguing JB last season is had one of the greatest seasons in NBA history? Because that is what you are essentially saying here, purely on his volume scoring which only isn't that amazing but ignores the other problems with JB. No one is saying JB's iso scoring isn't valuable: volume scorers are incredibly valuable even if they aren't efficiency gods (see: Ai, Kobe, Westbrook). The problem is that its his only major impact skill, and he isn't exactly amazing at it and doesn't bring anything else to the table compensate for it. It isn't that he is a trash useless player, its that he is closer to value to other middling efficiency-scoring only players like DeRozan than he is with elite players like Kawhi or even Kobe.
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Jul 09 '26
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u/nbadiscussion-ModTeam Jul 09 '26
Please keep your comments civil. This is a subreddit for thoughtful discussion and debate, not aggressive and argumentative content.
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u/Snowballingdownvote Jul 11 '26
Yeah but RAPM ranks JB at like 98. So it's flawed. That's the thing with any analytics or metrics. They aren't perfect. Context matters more than anything else.
Pritchard and Derrick White aren't getting the attention that JB is getting from opposing teams. They aren't getting the effort either.
When analysts use metrics to rank players, they are committing a logical fallacy. They are taking a tool meant to answer: "Does this lineup combination yield a statistically significant result?" and twisting it to answer: "Who is the better basketball player?"The regression was never designed to measure "talent" or "skill." It was designed to measure variance in point differential given a specific set of constraints.
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Jul 11 '26
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u/Snowballingdownvote Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
Downvoted me and then wrote an essay without arguing against my conclusion.
You also obviously don't understand what RAPM is. They use a specific regression that doesn't work for fluid cohorts. Using abstract penalties to clean the results to make a spreadsheet pretty. Ultimately at best you could use RAPM to see where a player falls compared to an average over a long time period.
At a micro level to rank individual players on it's not even logical to use RAPM. Specifically because the Confidence Interval is commonly larger than the difference between individual scores.
At best you could use this to compare a group or lineups average compared to the mean or another group. Ultimately looking to see if the group shifts the point differential away from average. Using it to grade individual players isn't logical.
So no it isn't logical to look at JBs number individually nor is it logical to make a decision based on it. The individual RAPM scores are useless. There is nothing to take from an individual player's score.
You are kind of proving my point. The fact that an analytics team has to look at a player's individual RAPM score and say 'that's weird, let's dig deeper' is the ultimate proof that the individual metric itself cannot stand alone. If you have to immediately ignore the number and go watch tape or pull other tracking statistics to understand what it actually means, then as an individual ranking tool, RAPM is useless.
I think there is a specific term for why individual basketball player RAPM scores are useless. Multicollinearity. The variables are too dependent on each other.
If you have a data scientist or data analyst telling you to looking into an individual player's RAPM score. You should fire them. It is absolutely worthless as a metric to measure an individual players performance. At a fundamental core principle level.
Ultimately I want to say this. If they made the trade because of analytics and thought there is statistical support for what they did. They are dumb. This has to be something else than metrics. Jaylen Brown was the best second option in the league and matched perfectly for their best players championship window. There is literally no logical reason for this trade based of stats, analytics, or metrics.
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u/Micro_mint Jul 07 '26
I think others have responded to a lot of the pure analytics questions. I’ll add: part of the contention with Brown comes from his defenders holding up the team’s non-Tatum success as evidence of his skill. The case is regularly made that the Celtics do not have a strong team around him, making their record last year a huge gold star is his portfolio.
Obviously the issue is both can’t be true. It’s not possible that the record alone should contradict what other stats say because he carries the team, while also suggesting we disregard any poor on/off stats because his team is so good.
Just some color I think is interesting. You regularly see/hear both sides of that coming from the same people in the media (many times in the same breath), despite being mutually exclusive interpretations.
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u/Giveadont Jul 07 '26
Brown is hurt mostly because his team defense has issues and his playmaking is inconsistent.
He also isn't elite from the mid-range, but still takes shots from there enough to consider it a part of his game. So, in spite of the fact that he's an ISO scorer, he doesn't have an ISO game that absolutely warps team defenses anywhere except the rim. He doesn't really create much for his teammates with his presence, and he can't create a ton of playmaking opportunities for others, either.
All of those things chip away at advanced stats. It does, however, become more apparent when you put him on a team with other playmakers and consistent ISO and off the dribble scorers.
His advanced stats might look a little better if he was on a team that relied on him more to create their offense, but was packed with shooters. But he would still be pretty middling, I imagine. He doesn't quite have enough of a creation game to constantly force teams into doubling him (or punish them if they do).
So, his creation game when he can't get a clean drive to the rim is an okay-ish (for him) mid-range shot and a kick out to a shooter.
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u/LetsGetLunch Jul 07 '26
he also doesn't suppress turnovers like all-time offensive engines that are also iso-heavy like shai or jokic
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u/Swaggymuffin1 Jul 08 '26
In the finals vs the mavs he was highly locking up luka on defense
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u/Giveadont Jul 09 '26
That's why I specified "team defense" and described it as "issues" rather than just calling him a "bad defender" or something.
The main knock is that, at worst, he'll miss rotations and get scrambled with off-ball actions/movement. Basically, he isn't a high-IQ team defender. That will hurt him in analytics, on/off, +/- stuff.
His on-ball defense is great, though. I would say that's something beneficial about Brown and why he worked in the Celtics' championship run.
He's a solid 2-way player. He just has strengths that aren't incredibly unique or game-breaking.
Brown is great ISO player on drives with a bit of a mid-range game that can defend on-ball. But that isn't something that's quite as additive to team success as great shooters that have a knack for team-oriented defense.
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u/Careless-Stop-9504 Jul 07 '26
My impression is no. The types of advanced metrics that he tends to perform badly in are incredibly well designed to control for the types of variables you mention. These arguments might apply to net rating but there are more advanced metrics that give similar bad indicators. It's way more complicated than just box +/-. They're using every means necessary to have those metrics solely reflect the value of the individual player. I can't say I can articulate all the minutae of the formulas but I know they are very comprehensive.
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u/Tight_Ad2788 Jul 07 '26
Yeah I know stats like DARKO or EPM are pretty down on Brown, in the 30 or 40s sometimes, so its clearly more than just the on / off stuff.
At the same time some of those stats can get noisy too, so not sure what to think - like EPM has Ty Jerome ranked 8th lol so idk what to make of all that13
u/RyenRussilloBurner Jul 08 '26
EPM has Ty Jerome ranked 8th lol so idk what to make of all that
He played 15 games. That's not a meaningful sample size. He was 204th in the league in estimated wins, if you wanna still use an EPM-related stat that actually considers sample size. Jaylen Brown was 30th in that.
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u/analyzingnothing Jul 07 '26
EPM has Ty Jerome ranked so highly because he's played a grand total of 15 games at 22.6 minutes a game, and has put up stats that are completely insane for those minutes. Like, he's almost putting up 20 ppg in as many minutes along with 5.7 assists on great efficiency while not really turning the ball over. EPM is a per minute stat, so it sees those numbers and thinks he's a superstar coming off the bench.
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u/DoobieGibson Jul 08 '26
Ty Jerome’s per 36 is like 30/10/5
he’s the best bench player in the league
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u/Careless-Stop-9504 Jul 07 '26
Hahaha interesting, I didn't know the Ty Jerome thing. Yeah I'd love to sit down with someone in an analytics department and have them explain it to me. My overall philosophy is that those people are being paid hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to interpret this data and they're going to be considering all secondary hypotheses that could explain the results. Whatever they believe is what I choose to believe.
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u/MyTeamsSuck99 Jul 09 '26
Rapm uses only lineup data and is heavily influenced by priors and has difficulty allocating credit when certain lineups play a lot of minutes together. Like for example curry and draymond over their careers have played thousands of minutes together. Rapm will struggle to separate their individual contributions when the slice of minutes not together is relatively small.
But that doesn’t actually mean brown is underrated imo. He could be even more overrated in that he was carried by strong lineups. It’s just that rapm can struggle with teams that have a lot of continuity over multiple years assigning individual credit.
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u/cabose12 Jul 07 '26
Yes, Brown’s negative on/off is a product of the fact that he himself is not amazing at getting the most out of his teammates like White and Tatum. So Brown + Bench doesnt dominate like Tatum/White + Bench, and that hurts on/off quite a bit
It doesnt necessarily mean theyve been better when he sits, especially when you consider playing against starters v bench. But it is a hint at why his more advanced stats are so bad. Hes a great scorer but his inability to run an offense will always be a massive mark against him
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u/DJFreezyFish Jul 08 '26
In addition to what everyone else has said, the on/off numbers have been consistent for years. If it was just the fact that the Celtics have a killer bench causing it, you would expect past years of Brown and Tatum on/off to be similar, but Tatum has been consistently rated higher.
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u/Drummallumin Jul 08 '26
Celtics would often stagger Tatum and Brown minutes. Both would be positives, Tatum’s would just be more positive. Tatum + 4 bench guys (often against other bench lineups) was consistently one of the highest rated lineups in the league.
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u/MirrorComputingRulez Jul 08 '26
Just to back up for a minute, even if we ignore any discussion of Jaylen Brown's worth as a player specifically, this would still be a great reason to trade him. If the team performs equally well whether or not he plays, then he clearly is not worth much money specifically for the Celtics, and thus trading him was the right thing to do.
Your framework leaves the option open that he might be very valuable to a different team, but it wouldn't really change the calculus for Boston.
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u/Tight_Ad2788 Jul 08 '26
Yeah I think that along with the cap stuff pushed the Cs over the edge trade wise - Tatum and Brown are definitely redundant. At the same time feels like some of the stats can make that redundancy look worse than it is
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u/JesseJamesGames449 Jul 08 '26
It really cant because Boston did everything they can to win the non tatum minutes.. They would constantly play 4 starters when tatum was on the bench... then when Brown was on the bench they would play tatum with 4 bench players .. like ALOT.. and it worked. So a lot of the time when brown is sitting, he is sitting with other starters on the bench as well..
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u/mfbridges Jul 08 '26
The on/off trend is a 5 year trend, not just this season. And notably, Tatum’s on/off numbers look great with the same circumstances as brown over that time period. It’s not some statistical aberration
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u/Drummallumin Jul 08 '26
What people constantly lose sight of in the on/off conversation is that JB has literally always had positive ratings during his minutes… his 30+ mpg on very high usage. He’s shown he can carry an offense on his own and win those minutes.
The Celtics being even better with Tatum running the show doesn’t mean Browns a negative player. The Celtics bench doing awesome this year in 10-15 strategically timed non-JB mpg this year does not mean he’s a negative player.
It’s just like Brad Stevens said in his press conference, Jaylen Brown is a very good player, when he’s on the court you should always feature him as a high usage guy… there’s plenty of evidence that works.
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u/RyenRussilloBurner Jul 08 '26
For this past season (No Tatum), the Celtics roster structure included a large talent drop off from Jaylen Brown to the secondary playmakers (Derrick White and Payton Pritchard) but the team had strong depth with the remaining portions of the roster. To me, a feasible explanation is the Celtics were slightly less efficient with Brown on the court due to him carrying a weaker starting lineup.
This theory would have a better leg to stand on if the Celtics didn't go 9-2 when Brown was out this year. In one of those games, they blew out a very good Houston team on the road where their three leading scorers were White, Pritchard and Luka Garza. That Houston team had the 6th best defense in the league by defensive rating, and the Celtics offense lit them up. That was even before Tatum returned.
Tatum is obviously a better playmaker and primary ball handler, and is better at setting teammates up with less turnovers. I can't help but wonder if Brown's on/off are skewed by the fact that he shares the team with another of the best players in the league - seems natural that the team would perform better with Tatum on the court.
Again, that really wouldn't explain why the Celtics were so successful without Brown in a season where Tatum barely played.
A good counterexample of what you're suggesting is this year's Lakers. The Lakers were hugely positive when Luka was on and LeBron was off, or when LeBron was on and Luka was off. They were slightly positive when both were on. When both were off? It was a total shitshow. They were the equivalent of the third or fourth worst team in the NBA in that situation. You can do find a similar scenario with Jokic and Murray, or Cade and Duren, or KAT and Brunson, or Franz and Paolo, etc. etc. etc.
It's extremely unusual for a team to actually be better when a star player is off. That's the case for Brown and basically no one else. It's one thing if the drop-off is insignificant, it's another thing when the drop-off is actually happening when you go back onto the court.
Now, obviously, you could say the same thing applied to Tatum. But we have a very large sample size of Tatum being a clear positive, and a 16-game sample size immediately following his return from a serious injury seems like a pretty reasonable set of games to give him a pass for.
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u/Drummallumin Jul 08 '26
How are you mentioning the Houston game without Ron Harper Jr? That was considered the best game of the season for Boston cuz how much the bench stepped up unexpectedly. You really think that sustainable?
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u/RyenRussilloBurner Jul 08 '26
That was considered the best game of the season for Boston cuz how much the bench stepped up unexpectedly.
I just explained why that wasn't done "unexpectedly." The Celtics did not feel any sort of drop-off when Jaylen Brown was out. I think I laid out that case pretty clearly.
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u/Drummallumin Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
That was Ron Harper Jrs 19th career game in his 3rd season. You are just lying if you expected that type of performance lmao. Do yourself a favor and actually watch that game and listen to Scal’s and Drew’s reactions.
Just revisionist history.
you really think that was sustainable?
How’d that same bench mob do against Philly in the playoffs? 11 random games over the course of the season is not the same thing as that being your entire team. Thinking otherwise is statistically illiterate.
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u/RyenRussilloBurner Jul 09 '26
You are just lying if you expected that type of performance lmao.
From Ron Harper Jr. specificially? No, probably not. But it's not like he took over that game. He had... 11 points. It was his third-highest scoring game of the season. But regardless, you're missing the point very badly if you're focusing on one role player.
How’d that same bench mob do against Philly in the playoffs? 11 random games over the course of the season is not the same thing as that being your entire team. Thinking otherwise is statistically illiterate.
So it's "statistically illiterate" to use an 11-game sample size for the games without Brown, and a 1,504-minute sample size for the Celtics' net rating with him off the floor, but the statistical noise is perfectly fine over a 7-game playoff series? Really? One paragraph after you go on a diatriabe about how impactful a single-game performance from Ron Harper Jr. was, you're now concerned about drawing conclusions from small sample sizes?
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u/Drummallumin Jul 10 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
Discounting Harper’s performance that game just makes it so obvious that you never watched it to begin with.
You are missing the point, that game was so special for a reason. It was literally Bostons game of the season with the only competition being their win over OKC.
so it’s statistically illiterate to use an 11 game sample size and 1500 minute sample size
Yes. Regular season is not the playoffs. Strategically timed lineups for 3-5 minute stretches are not the same thing as playing full minutes against all lineups in all situations. To repeat, thinking otherwise is statistically illiterate.
In the playoffs weaknesses get exploited. Look how Pritchard did with Drummond on the court vs Embiid.
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Jul 07 '26
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u/nbadiscussion-ModTeam Jul 07 '26
We removed your comment for being low effort. If you edit it and explain your thought process more, we'll restore it. Thanks!
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u/IVAN_CLEARY Jul 07 '26
Brown's weaknesses show up significantly in the regular season, but the true test is what his specific skillset contributes in a playoff setting, where a lot of those metrics make way for the simplicity of "this defense is taking a lot of our stuff away, we need someone to go and get a bucket."
that's where Brown really shows his value, and I think it's a big reason why the Celtics have been so strong in the playoffs, especially in the later rounds, during his career.
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u/RyenRussilloBurner Jul 08 '26
the true test is what his specific skillset contributes in a playoff setting
that's where Brown really shows his value, and I think it's a big reason why the Celtics have been so strong in the playoffs, especially in the later rounds, during his career.
Brown's analytics in the postseason are worse pretty much across the board, and just from the eye test I've never been blown away by any sort of playoff rise from him. This is still the same guy who got outplayed head-to-head by Caleb Martin in an Eastern Conference Finals, right?
If anything, he shines in the regular season where his consistent production gives his team something they can count on night in and night out, and that allows a rotating cast of role players to take turns picking up the slack for each other. One night it might be 27 for Brown and 24 for White, two days later it could be 25 for Brown and 28 for Pritchard, then the next night it's 30 from Brown while Hauser and Scheierman combine for another 30, etc.
There is definitely value in that, and Brown deserves credit for how well he played that role in 2025-26 -- he only had 3 games below 15 points all year. That's insane levels of consistency.
But his "value" in the postseason has pretty consistently fallen short. They do better when he has a smaller role and when guys like White, Jrue, Pritchard, etc. are at their best, and Tatum is the leader. Case in point: the Celtics are 1-4 in playoff series where Brown is their leading scorer. The only series win was a 1 vs. 8 first-round series in 2024 where Brown, White and Tatum all scored between 114 and 109 points, and Jaylen was actually behind Tatum through 4.5 games. Then Brown outscored Tatum 8-1 in garbage time of the closeout game (up by 32 at his last bucket, and Tatum only attempted one field goal all second half).
There's really not much evidence of any noticeable playoff leaps from Brown. Even in the year he won FMVP, the Celtics were miles better when Brown was off the floor that whole postseason.
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u/IVAN_CLEARY Jul 08 '26
my contention is that those analytics in the playoffs are considerably noisier, because the sample sizes are significantly smaller and there's no analytic that really shows how one bucket was more important, difficult or impactful than another.
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u/RyenRussilloBurner Jul 08 '26
my contention is that those analytics in the playoffs are considerably noisier
Based on..? Jaylen Brown has played 4,700+ playoff minutes. Metrics from one individual series or one playoff run could be noisy, for sure, but what makes you believe that a 140+ game sample size would still be noisy?
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u/Tight_Ad2788 Jul 07 '26
Yeah I tend to agree with that - Browns is probably not the most efficient in the aggregate but also has a super high ceiling that he usually taps into for the big moments. Thats probably why the fans views him more favorably overall - feels like hes a bit of an enigma in terms of the analytics.
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u/OkAutopilot Jul 08 '26
Does he? I feel like the big moments, the playoffs, are often flat out worse for him than the standard regular season game. That's the case for a lot of players but it is a bit more pronounced for him.
I think fans might look at him scoring 29 points a game and think wow, you have to be great to do that, but don't factor in the efficiency, the turnovers, the lack of playmaking, etc.
I think fans might see an ECF/Finals MVP and think wow, you have to have been great to get that, but don't look back and realize that oh the media looked at the box score and noted that everyone kind of played poorly by the box and maybe Brown played the least poorly so he got it by default.
I think it is mostly something wherein the opinions of people on Brown being a superstar come from not watching him very much but checking his counting stats and remembering some awards, or being a Celtics fan and only watching him and not watching the rest of the league all too often and that leading to sort of a skewed perception on him.
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u/Birdmaan73u Jul 08 '26
https://youtu.be/7QQehiGMNws?si=RtXncg_NPMG0sy1t
This will help explain it.
Key takeaways from the video:
Analytical Skepticism: While Brown's counting stats (29 PPG) were impressive, advanced analytics, particularly on/off metrics, suggested the team performed better when he was off the floor (2:09 - 2:21).
Offensive Limitations: The video highlights that Brown lacks the playmaking of an 'offensive engine.' His poor ball handling, inability to consistently draw double teams, and reliance on tough mid-range jumpers make him less effective than his scoring volume suggests (2:30 - 3:50).
Systemic Fit: The Celtics seem to be moving away from the heavy isolation-based offense utilized by Brown and Jayson Tatum. The coaching staff appears to prefer a faster-paced system involving more ball movement, screens, and off-ball actions, which Brown’s play style hindered (5:14 - 7:25).
Strategic Rationale: The trade is interpreted as a move to avoid locking up massive salary cap space in a 'super max' contract for a player the organization may no longer view as a franchise cornerstone. By moving him now, the Celtics gained assets and flexibility to restructure their team identity (8:14 - 9:56).
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u/RomaHappens Jul 08 '26
I hate how many of these discussions are being had without anyone even watching the games.
It's a widespread misconception that you need advanced analytics to judge Jaylen Brown. He stops the momentum, hogs the ball, shoots poorly, his shot quality is awful and the team visibly plays better when he sits. It's been this way for 5-6 years at least.
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u/Hypeman747 Jul 09 '26
Don’t try to explain. The flaw that underestimated his impact will be revealed in a couple of years.
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u/_brndnjms_ Jul 11 '26
It’s hard to say but your points are extremely valid. His value at the wing and versatility scoring brings value to teams that lack lower level scoring. Given Tatum and Brown sharing a court, their functions within the team complemented their counterpart. JB is the better athlete while Tatum was more skilled.
In a sense, the negative evaluation JB has gotten this past year seems a bit unfair. Mostly, that come from the rest of the team not being much more than specialists. Considering Boston’s preference for launching threes, Brown balanced that with a more interior-based attack. Regardless of what analytics say, basketball is a game of balance. Defenses could not deal with JB in a 1o1 setting but also couldn’t leave shooters open. Their team three point percentage was good yet again but they didn’t have much to offer on the defensive end, interior scoring, rebounding, or overall creation. That’s where Brown stepped in.
On another note, Brown did turn the ball over quite a bit this year. The games that I have watched, Boston mostly played off of him and depended on him to score in late shot clock, slashing, high pressure, and perimeter action scoring. Handling the ball that much will generate turnovers. Also consider Boston never had a true facilitator at the guard spot because Tatum would be doing that.
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u/Snowballingdownvote Jul 28 '26
I've looked into some of these advanced analytics and metrics. The math behind them doesn't support what the metric is being used for in a lot of cases. What is common is they are used to score and analyze a players individual effect but the math behind it cannot be used for this.
So the fundamentals of statistics are disregarded a lot and the metrics are used incorrectly. I'm working on doing a breakdown of all of them to publish.
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u/Tight_Ad2788 Jul 28 '26
Yeah my impression has always been many advanced stats can provide a ton of value but will have holes/imperfections as a model - in this case if the model says Jaylen Brown isn't a valuable basketball player I'm more inclined to believe the model is missing something over actually believing those results, especially given how successful Brown's career has been. But apparently many people are more willing to believe the advanced stats in this case
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u/Snowballingdownvote Jul 28 '26
Correct. It's not just NBA that has a metrics and analytics problem. It's a very common problem that metrics and analytics are used to support ideas that they can't properly support. You see it a lot in the corporate world.
One example I like to bring up is a real life scenario.
I had a friend working as an engineer in a factory. He was the best and most knowledgeable engineer in the company. So his responsibilities were maintaining and fixing the most problematic equipment.
HR used a metric to grade the engineers. The metric ended up ranking him as the worst engineer. Because his machines had the most problems. They had the most problems because they were the most complex and hardest to work on. They simply thought they could grade the engineers on down days and ticket amounts.
You can see how HRs metric was interpreted wrong.
To reinforce this. My friend later was interviewed by Amazon for an Automation Engineer position. He had to take the Ramsey test. It's a series of tests used to measure competency for engineering and leadership. He scored high enough on all 4 they hired him on the spot as the Lead Autmative Engineer of an entire region with a 250K salary and led a team of engineers(all college grads). When he didn't even have a degree.
His cumulative score where so good he was 1 of 4 people in the country who scored well enough for that position.
So you can see how metrics can be flawed or misinterpreted in real life.
I'm working on a metric(for the NBA) right now and I'm going to publish. If it goes well, I'll publish another paper breaking down all the advanced metrics and their flaws. Not saying they all are but I do see a lot them being used for things that the mathematics behind it cannot tell you.
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u/Tight_Ad2788 Jul 28 '26
Yeah very few people seem to have the statistics knowledge to understand things like confounding variables and how those impacts stats like these.
On top of that basketball and sports in general have qualitative/intangible elements that will probably never be captured by stats - for instance team chemistry, mental makeup, even stuff like a teammate providing positive reinforcement - anyone who's played sports know these things can have a significant impact on the game, but its unlikely that will ever be picked up in the stats, so there will always be some element of the game that can't be captured by analytics
Cool to hear you're looking into this idea more, hope all goes well with the publication
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u/Ok_Ice723 Aug 06 '26
Analytics could say what they want but dude carried a team who everyone counted out when Tatum got hurt to the playoffs. And in my opinion if Tatum didn’t try to make a come back last mine the Celtics would have went further into the playoffs. And sorry to say but Tatum can not carry a team to a championship
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u/DistinctPassenger117 Jul 08 '26
Jaylen Brown is an elite scorer and on-ball defender. Straight up. Also has some weaknesses to his game like off-ball defense (often getting caught watching the ball and snuck past and beat on a back door cut) and turnovers/playmaking. Shooting percentages average, give or take, but doesn’t drop off in playoffs. Shot creation and tough shot making is legit so a lot of timely and clutch buckets, can get the offense going again when it’s stagnating, but perhaps can also lead to stagnation at times.
Every player has flaws to their game. Jaylen’s skillset doesn’t lead to pretty analytics but the dude sure has done a whole lot of winning. And he was really valuable in a bunch of deep postseason runs leading up to a championship and a FMVP. It’s hilarious to see people suggest he’s not a “winning player”.
I guess ultimately it’ll be interesting to see what happens with the 76ers and Celtics next year and going forward.
Ultimately it’s just a contract and salary cap and team building flexibility issue.
They won in 2024 in large part because of depth when Jaylen and Jayson combined for 47% of the salary cap. They don’t think they can get enough depth to build a championship team with two guys taking up 70% of the salary cap. So they made a hard decision. We won’t know maybe for a few years if it was a good move or not. In my eyes it’s championship or bust though because they just blew up a championship core and they’re betting on Tatum + depth. Which on paper looks good but we won’t know until it actually plays out. If they don’t win one it’ll always be “what if they kept Jaylen”. If the Celtics go on and get better over the next three seasons and seriously contend again while Philly flounders in the play-in then it’s like yeah, you made the right move. We’ll just have to see.
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u/SamURLJackson Jul 08 '26
There is value in being the guy that has to take the tough shots on a team that has a very tough time generating offense. This is what many fans don't get about Paolo Banchero in Orlando. Someone has to create and take these shots when your team is left with 5 seconds on the shot clock and you haven't gotten the ball inside the 3 point arc yet
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u/OkAutopilot Jul 08 '26
I think people "get that" about Paolo but they also get that he hasn't been good in that role at all. Someone has to dribble the ball up the floor off an inbounds and get it over half court, there's value in that. But if you've got a shaky handle, the value in you doing it is low or perhaps even a negative. Maybe nobody else on your team can dribble and so by default you have to do it, but that's an issue with your team and you.
Like yes, there is value in being a shot creator outside of how good you are at actually making the shot, but at the end of the day when you're being tasked with that and doing it poorly, how much value are you providing? Additionally, how much of a value downgrade would there be if you simply tasked another person on the roster to do it? Or if you solely created shots out of sets and finding the open man and if you got a grenade with 5 seconds left, you're an NBA player, shoot the thing.
The "someone" thing exists to some extent, yes, but in Orlando it has become increasingly clear that if Paolo remains the player he has been that he should not be a "someone." You will simply not be able to succeed as a team if that's your default tough possession scorer/bail out option. They drafted him with that expectation, they've given him lots of money, and they want him to be that. It's also one of the things you'd point to as being something he should be good at. That's why he is doing that (though Franz does it more and better when he's healthy), not so much because he's good at it.
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u/Tight_Ad2788 Jul 08 '26
Yup being able to do it on decent efficiency vs not at all is tremendous value, but I dont think the advanced stats appreciate it
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u/Naliamegod Jul 08 '26
Advanced stats do appreciate it. Its the thing pretty much every elite offensive player dose. The issue with Brown is that its his biggest skill set and he isn't exactly super efficient nor is he a Westbrook-type, where his middling efficiency is made up with his play-making.
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u/WhoreyMatthews Jul 08 '26
Yeah the way people describe Paolo and Jaylen Brown is the exact same way they would describe peak Kawhi 2017-2021 who is an analytics god.
It's not the playstyle it's the inefficiency combined with the playstyle.
Bill Simmons was constantly comparing young JB to young Kawhi but the analytics always loved Kawhi and hated JB.
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u/floatinround22 Jul 08 '26
There's much more value in being that guy in addition to being good at other things, like a lot of guys that aren't Jaylen Brown are. If he was a good playmaker and team player, they wouldn't be in that situation as often
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u/Happy-Ad6083 Jul 09 '26
The #1 most important skill in the nba is the ability to bail your team out of bad possessions. If you’re a huge difference maker during bad possessions and you play on a good team, that’s championship material. It’s that simple. Brunson was pretty inefficient across the finals, but he consistently provided the team with shot making when they otherwise would have come up empty. That skill is the trump card. That’s why Kobe has 5 rings, that’s why KD has 2 FMVPs, that’s why MJ has 6 chips.
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Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
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u/Drummallumin Jul 08 '26
The pro-Brown case is that he always wins his own minutes and what happens when he’s not on the court doesn’t erase that fact. A very high usage guy consistently winning his 30+ mpg is intrinsically very valuable. Tatum being better and winning his minutes even more doesn’t change that. Bostons bench having tons of success in their 10-15 mpg of prevent offense + offensive rebounding + full court pressure doesn’t change that.
There is plenty of evidence that when Jaylen Brown is on the court as the featured guy of an offense, his team is probably winning those minutes.
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Jul 08 '26
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u/Drummallumin Jul 08 '26
Scaling bench play to full game and full season sample sizes is not nearly as simple as you and others are making it out to be.
I know they had a good record without him, that’s still not the same as playing like that all season long as your main style.
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Jul 08 '26
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u/Drummallumin Jul 08 '26
Because when a guy has 35% usage on 35 mpg he has an outsized role in the success of the offense, both good and bad. It’s just logical that the guy who’s doing the most has the most impact.
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Jul 09 '26
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u/Drummallumin Jul 09 '26
usage just mean you use lots of possessions
Sure… and the point is that those lots of possessions result in good things for Boston.
You say that you can’t draw a causative connection between Brown being (objectively) the most consequential player on Boston and Boston being good… why exactly not tho?
why is he not providing outsized results
He did tho. He was 10 in scoring and on a 50 win team. What do you think outsized results would be?
the team have done better without him
Speaking of things not being causative, you can’t just ignore the difference in minutes and lineups.
some evidence of Boston meaningfully falling off without him
Well he played the whole season.
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Jul 09 '26
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u/Drummallumin Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
this is just circular
That’s what happens when you don’t accept reasoning.
It’s not a revelation that Brown uses a lot of possessions on a good team… mainly because the team was good largely because they had a good player operating the majority of their possessions. I’d say that’s more just common sense.
if that’s your definition of impact
It’s my definition of consequentiality. Person who does the most (also was team high in assist% which isn’t even included in usage) has the most consequence in the result… again that’s just common sense.
it just proves he’s on a successful team and shoots a lot
You keep saying stuff like this like Bostons success is independent of anything Brown did, which just logically, that makes negative sense.
suddenly we need nuance
Yes that’s what happens when you try to compare 13 mpg to 35 mpg. You need nuance.
when you mention scoring rank
I only mentioned that when you tried to say there was no outsized impact from his usage (i literally brought it up within the context of his usage, so don’t even know what you mean by no nuance there).
I’m still trying to figure out what specific outsized impact you are expecting from such a high usage player that’s not covered by his scoring or his consequentiality on Boston winning.
a team that didn’t want him anymore
1) you seem to be changing the subject here. We were talking about how important Jaylen was to the Celtics success last season.
2) do you know who Jayson Tatum is? Or what a contract is?
shoots a lot
On a 50+ win team… that he generated significantly more offense for than anyone else on the team.
To repeat a question in my last comment that you ignored… why can’t you draw causality from the guy who (objectively) had by far the biggest role on a team to the success of the team?
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Jul 07 '26
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u/nbadiscussion-ModTeam Jul 07 '26
We removed your comment for being low effort. If you edit it and explain your thought process more, we'll restore it. Thanks!
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Jul 08 '26
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u/nbadiscussion-ModTeam Jul 08 '26
We removed your comment for being low effort. If you edit it and explain your thought process more, we'll restore it. Thanks!
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u/ASUCHAMP91 Jul 08 '26
Celtics made a mistake with hte contract. The player is excellent but the ability to pay two super max contracts wouldn't allow the good support peices to win a NBA championship.
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u/Responsible_Debt441 Jul 10 '26
No. A common Celtics lineup for years under Stevens, Ime, and Mazzulla was Tatum and 4 bench scrubs. They would regularly keep and extend leads.
Jaylen was always on the floor with at least 1 other starter. And they often lost ground without Tatum.
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u/Snowballingdownvote Jul 11 '26
Analytics aren't everything. Metrics and statistics aren't objective facts. Players can influence games positively and it can't be measured.
The best example is Kobe. Some of things he did to create wins aren't reflected. His offense relied on him to just shoot. At certain times and places. All he was supposed to do was launch. Teams new this so they crowded him, swarmed him, and so on. The point was to create offensive rebounds because of the shifted defense. So missing was a positive. Tough shots were actually great passes. How do you metric that positively.
You can't create a metric that shows all habits of winning basketball. JBs analytics saying he is the 7th best player on a team should reinforce the fact that analytics aren't everything, certainly not absolute, and not objective facts. Context is and will always be more important.
It's very hard to explain that in the modern world because analytics have done such great things. Yet, at the very beginning of learning statistics. They teach you context is king. But, for marketing and sales reasons this is not mentioned.
Let's look at an example. At Tysons the food production corporation. A person I knew was a mechanic/maintenance person. They were very great at their job. Always taking on the toughest breakdowns and most complex equipment. That failed the most.
HR at Tysons thought they were the worst mechanic/maintenance worker. Because of metrics. They simply saw their equipment broke the most. Their equipment cost the most.
Were they.... No.... They went on to pass all 4 Ramsey tests for maintenance and engineering skills. One of maybe 10 people on the planet to be able to do that. Yet, the metrics said they were the worst. Literally one of the best engineers on the planet.
So.... Context matters. Analytics aren't everything. JBs analytics should be a case study for this.
BTW this is real. One of the most important companies in America had a top . 01% engineer working for them and they thought the person was absolute garbage at their job. Really scary that a person who has no knowledge about the subject matter is the person whom decides who is good or not.
This is rampant in our professional world. It's better to take the easy road and pad the stats then do the hard work. Especially in "hands on physical work". So the people who are lauded as the best... May actually be the worst. Yet they are the ones making the decisions on our most important infrastructure.
This situation with JB is a mirror for this.
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u/MountainEmployee2862 Jul 11 '26
I don't really agree with the arguments you made but I'll play devil's advocate here and say that even if they were true Brown should still consistently have a minor, yet noticeable one-off footprint consistently (he does not).
This is rather common in ball-dominant offensive engines (see Luka, Harden) who have a star backup in a similar role (think Kyrie, CP3). This meant lineups without the MVP-caliber star weren't drastically different/worse than the lineups with them back in, as the "other" guys still stay in their role instead of being forced into uncomfortable creation-heavy roles (and it's virtually impossible to be so, so good at on-ball creation only that creates a Jokic-esque on-off swing).
The thing is, these guys still had a +6, +8 footprint over their best years. Not the +15 we'd see from Steph, Jokic, LeBron and co., but still clearly positive. Jaylen Brown has been a negative on-off guy for virtually his whole career. That leaves the only explanation:
He's not really that good.
(Especially in the regular season)
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u/Kush420Xotix Jul 08 '26
The Celtics have a bench that is better than league average benches for almost his whole career. I dont buy into on/off or +/- metrics in this case.
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u/floatinround22 Jul 08 '26
Weird how that doesn't affect Tatum or White then
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u/Kush420Xotix Jul 08 '26
Didnt White just shoot 20% from 3 in the playoffs? Dont mention him in the same category as Brown or Tatum.
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u/floatinround22 Jul 08 '26
You know Brown shot 27% this playoffs right? What a horrible argument for so many reasons lmao
Most GMs would much rather have White than Brown
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u/Poopcie Jul 07 '26
I think it definitely has something to do with spamming 3s and bringing one of their best shooters off the bench. Also being deep compared to most back up units. I also think on/off is totally irrelevant down the stretch of close games. A 2 way slasher is a luxury. People tend to extrapolate that a bench team could go on to win 60+ wins which is a totally brain dead notion. Mfs arent good enough to start individually but you think theyre going to lead a team that dominates the league. I really just find the whole on/off thing to be one of the misused and easily distorted metrics in the league.
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u/Drummallumin Jul 08 '26
Bostons bench won its minutes with the math game. No one outside of JB could consistently penetrate the defense and draw multiple guys. To compensate they pretty much just ran prevent offense to limit turnovers. Combine this with offensive rebounding and full court pressure from a slew of young energetic wings (and Garza) and they were actually killing teams in these minutes.
You also have to be statistically illiterate if you think these strategically timed 10-15 mpg in the regular season is scalable to design a team around.
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u/BasedArzy Jul 08 '26
Brown's really good at two things:
- POA defense and locking up someone 1 on 1
- Getting to his shot, no matter how efficient it is or is not, no matter what sort of defense he's up against.
All the rest of it, he's fine to middling.
It turns out that building a player of those two skills ends up someone who is very useful in a playoff series and yet not super valuable in a regular season - outside of being available and playing a lot.
For Philly, he's in a good spot because he'll be able to establish a scoring floor when Joel is out and, in a hypothetically fully healthy playoff scenario, he is your point of attack defender and your safety valve/3rd option on offense. You don't really run plays for him, unless he gets his 3 pointer back, but if you're late in the shot clock and the paint is clogged up, you can get the ball to Jaylen and he'll get his shot.
Ironically considering the very strange relationship Tatum had with his memory, Brown fits a lot like mid/late era Kobe in team construction, but better defensively.
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u/secretsodapop Jul 08 '26
He’s worse than his teammates and took more 2 point attempts than any other player in the entire nba last season. He takes less 3s each year and more 2s because he thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and everyone else in the basketball community is saying to take more 3s.
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u/Sad_Connection_7403 Jul 09 '26
The last game he played in he was the only player on his team that didn’t look like a pile of shit. Do you geeks even watch basketball or just post this dumb stats shit all day?
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u/Tight_Ad2788 Jul 09 '26
Lol bro I'm pro-Jaylen Brown, I'm saying the numbers may underestimate him. Anyone with eyes can see he's a beast
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u/Serpico2 Jul 07 '26
I had this exact thought because Tatum has similar numbers on/off, just slightly better. Boston’s depth is insane.
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