Ex-Celtics Star Jaylen Brown Gets Brutal Evaluation From ESPN image
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Jaylen Brown's analytics are a topic of discussion yet again.
ESPN has been rolling out its NBA Rank for the upcoming season this week. Brown, who was traded from the Boston Celtics to the Philadelphia 76ers in the offseason, landed at No. 14, one spot ahead of Kawhi Leonard and one spot behind Kevin Durant.
ESPN voters ranked Brown anywhere from No. 9 to No. 23. The metrics weren't nearly as high on the All-Star.
"The claims of Brown being the league's 'best two-way player' came mostly after he had his best game of the year against the LA Clippers and Kawhi Leonard, but few noticed Brown's next game, where he scored 14 points on 24 field goal attempts," ESPN's Dean Oliver wrote as part of an NBA Rank audit. "Maybe we term this a 'highlight bias' because our voters perhaps saw those highlights and loved him, ranking Brown between No. 9 and No. 23. The metrics' average, meanwhile, was around No. 60.
"The quick reasons the metrics don't rate Brown as highly are that the Celtics played better without him, he turns the ball over a lot and he doesn't have great vision. The not-so-quick reasons filled plenty of podcast space over the summer."
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Oliver isn't the first person to question Brown's standing.
Even after Brown finished sixth in last season's MVP voting, advanced metrics painted a much different picture of his value.
The debate reached another level when ESPN's Bobby Marks revealed that an NBA analytics staffer viewed Brown as "the seventh-best player on a team." Brown responded directly to the claim, stating that "analytics nowadays used to discredit and control narratives."
Brown was rightfully annoyed. He's a five-time All-Star, two-time All-NBA selection, Finals MVP and NBA champion. He's also coming off the best statistical season of his career, averaging 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds and 5.1 assists on a Celtics team that won 56 games.
The idea that Brown is the 60th-best player in the NBA is hard to take seriously.
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