Jaylen Brown: an average player among the elite?

Before you start reading this article, I ask that you come with an open mind and remember that I’m comparing Jaylen Brown to the elite players of this world, not the entire league. Moreover, this piece focuses solely on his on-court impact because it can be measured, and that matters to me. Therefore, while I acknowledge Jaylen Brown’s leadership, aura, and awards, the focal point of this article is his on-court production.

To better understand Jaylen Brown’s on-court impact, I dove deep into his statistics and rewatched games from recent seasons. While Jaylen Brown can sometimes appear to be the best player in the world (as Oliver Fox noted), the numbers don’t tell the same story.

Jaylen Brown, a scoring machine – really?

At 23 points per game, Jaylen Brown ranks 19th on the list of top scorers. However, points per game is a statistic with some gray areas. It doesn’t tell us about the volume needed or the efficiency behind those 23 points. To assess scoring ability, you need to combine two statistics: Usage Rate (volume) and True Shooting Percentage (efficiency). So, how does Jaylen Brown measure up in scoring compared to the league’s high-volume players?

The answer: pretty average. According to Cleaning The Glass, among 53 players with a Usage Rate above 25%, Jaylen Brown ranks 27th in efficiency (TS%)—between 21-year-old Alperen Şengün and 23-year-old Tyrese Maxey. Looking at a larger pool from Basketball Reference, Brown ranks 50th in TS% among the top 100 players by Usage Rate this season. It doesn’t get more “average among the elite” than that.

But why isn’t Jaylen Brown more efficient? And why does he sometimes appear more efficient than the stats suggest?

Highlights don’t always equate to productivity

Jaylen Brown’s average efficiency stems from two interrelated factors. The first is his shot selection. Brown takes 36% of his shots in the mid-range, the least efficient area on the court. He’s very good in this zone — 48% of his mid-range attempts go in, placing him among the best. However, excelling in a “low-reward” area doesn’t boost his overall efficiency.

https://www.bball-index.com/shot-charts-lite/

While 36% of his shots come from the…