BOSTON — Each time Jaylen Brown went to the line in Boston's win over the Phoenix Suns, and there were a lot of them, the chants grew louder.
MVP! MVP! MVP!
“It's pretty cool. I’m not gonna lie,” Brown said after the game. “It's pretty awesome at this point in my career to be able to get that love from the fans.”
It’s not a secret that Brown has wanted to prove he was deserving of this love for quite some time. He was asked about having fun this season, a question he’s been asked before, and he was just as clear as always.
“It's been a great year. I'm extremely grateful,” Brown said. “I'm proud of my team, I'm proud of myself, all of the above. I've always felt like I could be one of the top players in the world, given the opportunity, and I feel like I got to display that this season. So now the focus is just get ready for the playoffs. It's kind of like my mentality now.”
Getting to this point for Brown hasn’t been about being selfish and going for his own stats. Brown has 314 assists this season, already more than any other season in his career and the first time he’s crossed the 300 assist mark. He’s averaging 5.1 assists per game this season, but also 9.3 potential assists per game. A potential assist is any pass to a teammate who shoots within one dribble of receiving the ball.
On top of that, Brown is second on the team in secondary assists, or the pass that leads to the assist, with 43 overall (0.6 per game). Brown’s vision and ball-movment have been great this season, but it seems to be getting better as the season progresses.
In March, Brown is averaging 6.6 assists, 11.6 potential assists, and 1.3 secondary assists per game. The shift to more distribution works well with Jayson Tatum’s return to action. Tatum will naturally take up more of the overall usage and scoring. Brown knows it takes some humility to remake himself when someone like Tatum is added to the mix.
“Obviously, I'm having a great season, but then I have to just think, what's the big picture?” Brown said. “And sometimes that’s not easy, but I always put the team first and what the bigger picture is first. So it's just kind of a feel thing. You kind of feel it out, and it takes some time. When to be aggressive, how the teams guard, and kind of reassessing all of that stuff, because it's different. This team is different.”
This is the challenge for the Celtics over the next few weeks. Boston has won some games, but they’ve also lost a couple of winnable games against good teams. It’s mid-March, but they are still a work in progress.
“It's not going to be perfect,” Brown said. “I think we could have won in a better facet tonight against the Suns, but it’s going to take a little bit of that growth factor by the time we get to the playoffs. So I’ve got to be patient. Everybody’s got to be patient. This is not the best version that you are watching right now. So we just take it one day at a time.”
No one is worried about getting there. Tatum and Brown have been doing this for quite a long time with a lot of success. The only difference right now is that Brown has been in the driver’s seat all season. However that morphs over time is up to the guys in the locker room to figure out.
In the meantime, Brown’s reward is soaking up the adulation. He’s enjoying the moments when the come, whether it’s at the free throw line closing out a tight game, or somewhere else.
“I was in Southie yesterday [for the St. Patrick’s Day parade],” Brown said. “And I got some MVP chants as well in Southie. I think that might have been a little cooler.
“It was fun. That was my first time going to St Patrick's Day. I didn't know it was, like. a big thing. It felt like there was like a million people out there. There was a lot of people out there, and it was cold, and it was early, but it felt like the whole city was drunk. But I had a good time.”
Ten years into his career, and Brown is just now getting a true “welcome to Boston” moment. This really is a great year for him.