Thoughts on Jaylen Brown surpassing expectations and some alternate All-NBA comps

From 2016-2024 seasons, Jaylen Brown had played a total of 32 games without Tatum, had averaged 28.3 points, 7.2 rebounds and 3.4 assists in those games, and lead the team to a 16-16 record. Tatum, on the other hand, had played a total of 99 games without Brown (71-28 – 59 win pace) with his stat averages holding steady.

While 32 games was a small sample size, it had been clear Brown was able to step up offensively in those games so I had come into this season expecting roughly the same. The team I kept mentioning was the 2005 Lakers built around Kobe, Odom, and Butler that won 34 games after Shaq's departure. In my comp, I figured Brown, White and Pritchard would follow a similar path without Tatum. As I'm sure many of you saw, I commented numerous times that my expectation was for Brown to average 27+ with a dip in efficiency, make 2nd/3rd Team All-NBA, and lead the team to 35-43 wins. Candidly, I set this range deliberately higher than the Kobe team figuring it would be hard to argue against a projection that favorably compared Brown to Kobe. I did, however, realize that the 2005 Laker team won 34 in large part because Kobe and Odom both missed 16+ games that season. Given that Brown has missed an average of 16 games per year over his past 6 season, this still felt like the perfectly reasonable comp.

That's all to say that, thus far, Brown is certainly exceeding my expectations and it's been a delight to watch. Sticking with that Kobe comp, I had noticed post-Shaq, Bryant's FG% dipped from 46% to 43%. Similarly, I had looked at JB's FG% last year (46%) and set my expectation at 44%. Again, I figured setting that deliberately higher than Kobe would be hard to argue against. Instead, we're seeing JB average 29 points, 6 rebounds, 4.5 assists with 50%/34.7% shooting. The team is 12-9 (47 win pace) and has wins against the Pistons, Magic, Cavs and Knicks.

Truly, that's impressive. While we did see Brown's overall efficiency dip in November (46.9%/27.8% for the month), we've also seen signs that he's getting even better (34ppg over the past 5 games) as the team is getting more comfortable overall. A variety of factors seem to be at play. Pritchard is proving capable as a starter. White's growing more comfortable as a 2nd option. Queta has been more than serviceable in the starting center role. Players we reasonably expected nothing from (Walsh, Minott, Hugo) are making contributions. But no factor is greater than Jaylen Brown playing the absolute best basketball of his life.

This has got me thinking about my 2005 Kobe comp and instead wondering if it's more similar to the 2002 Pierce team that won 49 games and made the ECF with Walker as his sidekick. Or perhaps, even more lofty, like the 1994 Bulls where Jordan "retired" and Scottie Pippen (with Horace Grant as his sidekick) managed to win only 2 less games than the prior season (55), make 1st Team All-NBA and take the team into the 2nd round.

But this also has got me thinking about one of my earliest Brown comps. Believe it or not, while Celtic fandom was melting down after the 2016 draft, I was one of the most optimistic fans about JB's future and driving his early bandwagon. While fans were salty we didn't trade the pick for Jimmy Butler or select Dunn, I had made numerous posts pointing out that he could potentially develop over 5 years similar to Jimmy Butler and noted I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up butter than Butler someday.

The thing about the Butler comp is that he didn't follow the typical Superstar trajectory of taking a leap age 21-23. Instead, Butler was a slow burn developing slowly over the course of multiple seasons. Given JB was thought to be a raw young athlete coming out of the draft, this seemed like the best case scenario. Even when expectations of him wavered (my own included) during his season 3 regression, I noted that Butler similarly had a down season in Year 3, but took a leap his 4th year:

In Nov 2018 at the height of Jaylen's struggles and benching, I said the following:

"I still think Jaylen has potential to be very good. When he was drafted he was really raw but the hope was that he'd develop like Jimmy Butler – a rare instance of a player who took 5 years to slowly develop into a star. FWIW, Jimmy shot 39% from the field and 28% from three during his 3rd season – so maybe there is still hope for Jaylen."

Like clockwork, Brown showed up in Season 4 a changed man and averaged 20+… just like Butler in Year 4. Where this gets really interesting to me, is that every time people counted out Butler, he continued to take things to another level. His greatest success happened right around the same age as Jaylen Brown (30) after three teams had traded him away and he went on to lead Miami to the ECF 3x in 4 years and the Finals twice as their main guy. That 6 year stretch from age 27 to 33 was also when Butler got all 5 of his All-NBA selections peaking out as 2nd-Team All-NBA. Likewise, Brown, who thus far only has 1 All-NBA selection (2nd team) in 2022-23 could optimistically go through a stretch of All-NBA seasons over these next 5ish years of his prime.

One caveat to all of this is that scoring is up league-wide as a whole. There's currently 14 guys in the league averaging 27+ ppg. If you expand out stats and look at all the major counting stats (points + rebounds + assists + steals + blocks… subtract missed shots and turnovers), there's 21 guys ranked ahead of Brown despite his amazing start. However, some of this is because that stat (EFF) overemphasizes secondary categories like rebounds. With the NBA's changing All-NBA this year to be positionless, I wonder if this helps or hurts JB's case. Open question, is there some better metric for estimating All-NBA teams?

Last caveat, of course, is that there is now a strong expectation that Jayson Tatum will return at some point this season so that could be a double edged sword that both increases our expected final win total while also decreasing some bulk scoring stats for JB later in the season, assuming Tatum returns close to the player he was pre-injury. Funny thing is I've always said Tatum + JB was like if Jordan had been Pippen and Pippen had been Jordan… meaning their games reflected the styles of those guys, it was like if Pippen had been the Top 5 talent #1 guy while Jordan had been his excellent sidekick. However, having read that most players take a couple years to fully return to themselves after achillies tears, this early season success leads me to wonder if we might actually see a couple seasons here where these roles actually do reverse with JB staying as the team's top option while Tatum evolves into his sidekick as he continues his recovery.

Regardless, absolutely incredible start and worthy of praise.

TL;DR: Jaylen is outperforming most projections, putting up elite numbers, and carrying the team on a winning pace. Looking less like the 2005 Laker comp and more like 2002 Pierce/1994 Pippen as JB continues down a Jimmy Butler-esque All-NBA slow growth trajectory.