Everything was great for the Boston Celtics this year until it wasn’t. The best offense in league history quickly turned into the worst offense in the league during the month of December. The red-hot three-point shooting turned into an awful shooting slump. And now, they’ve lost four of their last five games.
Boston is still sitting pretty in the standings, but there are a lot more questions surrounding the team than there were a little over a week ago. The shooting woes are one thing. It was extremely unlikely that the Celtics would continue to shoot as well as they were from distance. But the way they’re responding to their shooting struggles has been the bigger problem.
After their second loss in a row to the Orlando Magic at home, Marcus Smart pointed out that they’re letting their poor shooting affect their play in other areas of the game. And while the whole team is at fault, Jaylen Brown has been the poster child for those issues.
To be perfectly clear, this is not to say that Brown has been bad this year. In fact, it’s been the opposite. He’s been the second-best player on the best team in the league and is putting up career numbers. He’s a shoo-in to make his second All-Star team. When he’s hot, he’s hot. But when he’s not, he hurts the way the team plays on both sides of the court.
Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images
Brown has never been the best playmaker. His assist-per-game numbers have leveled out at roughly 3.5 per contest over the last three years. Now, that’s not bad, but in recent games, it looks as though he’s lost faith in his teammates. Instead of playing within the flow of the offense, Brown has decided to “do it himself” over and over again.
Watch this play from December 16 against the Magic. Brown gets the ball on a fastbreak and sprints down the court. Sam Hauser moves to the corner and gets wide open. But instead of dishing it to him, Brown takes a contested layup with multiple Orlando defenders around him.
He gets bailed out with a foul call and sinks both free throws, but the point is he chose to do it all by himself instead of trusting his teammates. Some people will argue that getting inside is more valuable than a three-point shot, but when Hauser is open in the corner, and two defenders are ready to meet him at the basket, the odds aren’t in Brown’s favor.
Hauser has been…
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