Jaylen Brown Gets His Chance to Lead the Celtics with Jayson Tatum Out

Jaylen Brown preferred to focus on the the playoffs.

While the story of the following year in Celtics basketball became clear in an instant in May, and the star had long considered his ability to lead a team, Brown stayed in the moment for the late stages of the Celtics-Knicks series once Jayson Tatum fell with an Achilles tear.

“Just be who I am,” Brown reflected after Game 5. “I think that’s it. Be myself, come out, be aggressive and get it done in multiple ways. It’s a team. We’ve always been a team. I’ve always preached team. I’ve done whatever to push this team forward. So whatever’s needed of me, I’m excited to be able to facilitate in any role. It could change each game, each night, defensively, offensively, but the goal is to just lead, just be myself.”

The comments only scratched the surface of what Brown would assume less than five months later when Celtics training camp begins. For the first time in his career, Brown will become the player Boston turns toward for the final shot late, which he’s only done 17 times, and to set up the bulk of their possessions alongside maintaining the Celtics’ defensive stature after immeasurable losses over the summer.

The Celtics didn’t make his audition for the lead role easy, though it never would be.

There’s evidence Brown can meet the moment, yet Boston reportedly fielded Brown trade calls this offseason while assessing every possible route the franchise could take forward. Despite a new collective bargaining agreement changing team-building, and mixed opinions league-wide on whether you can reconstruct a championship roster around two super max players now, Brad Stevens committed to another season for the tandem. Only one will play beginning next month, and Brown came off meniscus surgery in June.

Bobby Marks believed it’s possible to win again the way the Celtics will try: if the two stars with max salary cap hits are healthy and young. While 2025-26 won’t prove as simple as succeed or see the pair broken up, the way young talent grows around Brown and the team’s remaining veterans will inform decisions they need to make over the next year. There’s no certainty Tatum returns from an Achilles tear the same, or that he and Brown alone can win at the level they did previously when they reunite without the 2024 championship cast. But they’ll give it a chance. Stevens’ north star as president has been if Brown and Tatum play in green.

“I know that we always talk in terms of superstars and don’t talk in terms of, necessarily, the other 13 players,” Stevens said in May. “And so the reality is, we have a ton of good players, and everyone leans on everyone. That said, Jaylen and Jayson have gotten the majority of attention because of how good they are. And I have full faith that, any game that you have those guys on the court, or one of those guys on the court, you have a great shot.”

“And so, I have full faith in Jaylen.”

Games 5 and 6 against New York showed the extremes possible for a Brown-led franchise. The win in Boston that saved the Celtics’ season two days after Tatum’s injury saw arguably his best production ever, 9-for-17 shooting, 26 points, 12 assists and eight rebounds.

Two days later exhibited his worst — 8-for-20 FG, seven turnovers and six fouls in three quarters.

It’s the responsibility Brown long considered himself capable of shouldering, and now will need to for most if not all of the season to keep the franchise afloat in Tatum’s absence. That sets up a potentially career-altering chance for Brown to show the basketball world that he can maintain the Celtics’ success that’s persisted throughout his career. In games with Brown in the lineup since his rookie year, Boston is 473-265.

“I’ve had to change roles, styles,” Brown said, reflecting on that journey to CelticsBlog in July while mentioning that he hasn’t agreed with everything. “I’ve had to do things that other players of my talent just haven’t had to do, and I’ve been okay with them, because I’ve always been a team guy. I feel like sometimes that gets taken for granted.”

Brown and Tatum have shared the floor in 601 games in their career, inseparable despite the way their games clashed at times. They built enough chemistry to become champions together, partially through embracing that Tatum would garner greater usage and Brown would fit in around that. The latter managed well, averaging 20.5 points, 5.7 rebounds and 2.8 assists per game while shooting 47.8% from the field and 36.0% from three.

His role allowed him to benefit from the extra room Tatum’s gravity provided him, while still challenging himself whenever possible — taking difficult in-between shots, embracing significant defensive assignments and practicing his playmaking in and outside of games.

“The best thing for the team might be for Derrick to be the primary ball handler one night and it might be Jrue to be the primary ball handler the next,” Celtics assistant coach Tony Dobbins said, describing Brown’s role in 2023.

“That’s where the challenge for any great player … to have the willingness to know that the opponent or the coverage or the matchup might dictate that I attack from this area, and even though I had success, (then in) the next game, it might be someone else, and if you can have that, then that makes you very hard to guard … but then also you’re balancing your ambition to grow your game and to show the areas that you’ve improved with a person who prides themselves on not settling or being content with where they are.”

That left Brown in a better position to thrive in the rare instances where Tatum sat out — 42 games where Brown posted 27.3 PPG, 7.1 RPG and 4.2 APG on 50.2% FG (35.9% 3PT). It only happened in spots, a game late in Tatum’s rookie season, three late in 2019, one of which Brown came off the bench for, and four matchups in January, 2020 when Kemba Walker and Gordon Hayward led the offense.

In Brown’s first full opportunity, in 2020-21 after Hayward departed, Walker began the year injured and Tatum missed time with COVID — Brown exploded for 29.4 PPG, 5.0 RPG and 3.6 APG on 51.9% FG (44.4% 3PT) over five games. For four years, he solidified himself as one of the league’s best secondary stars, a 24.5 PPG scorer who could elevate his volume in Tatum’s absence, though he floated around 3.4 APG and 2.8 turnovers each night until 2024, when he slashed his giveaways to 2.4 before posting a career-high 4.5 APG in 2025.

“I’m just grateful to be put in positions to have responsibility … I’ve looked forward to the challenge,” Brown said in 2021. “Grateful that it’s finally gotten here.”

Brown worked meticulously to become a better passer since then, the part of his game that came the furthest and that opponents will test most this upcoming year. He’ll also need to rebound, guard multiple positions and shoot better from deep to fill in where the team will miss Tatum.

Tatum emerged as one of the league’s most promising players the previous year with his breakout February, and later in 2021, scored his, to that point, signature 60-point performance in April before leading the Celtics into the playoffs with a 50-point performance against the Nets. Brown missed the series after undergoing season-ending wrist surgery, and while Ime Udoka took over the head coaching role with an open mind about both Brown and Tatum as playmakers, the offense quickly assembled around Tatum and has mostly leaned that way since he missed only 33 games over the past four years.

Now, Tatum will miss that many in a row, 37, if he comes back at the absolute earliest end of the 8-9 month timetable his father set. More likely, Tatum could sit out most or all of this season. A nightly reality the Celtics haven’t faced since 2016-17, when Isaiah Thomas ran the show and Brown rarely appeared as a rookie. Even in 2025, when Brown reached a career-high 4.0 minutes of ball time, he fell behind Brown and White in touches, and didn’t exceed his own average number of touches from between 2021-23. Brown learned to do more with less. Getting off the ball faster. Leaning on the talented players around him, including Tatum, to make his life easier.

“There’s nothing wrong with doing your job on the team,” Brown said in 2023. “Throughout my career, I’ve learned to be and play the role that has been needed for me to play, and I think that’s part of why the success has been able to happen. Being able to humble yourself and be like yeah, I know I could be something somewhere else, but there’s no problem being a great team guy and winning here in Boston.”

Brown’s grown more capable since then. In 2022-23, the Celtics fell from a +5.7 net rating with Brown and Tatum on the floor to only +3.2 with Brown alone. The latter capsized to a -7.7 rating for Brown into the playoffs, then improved drastically into 2024, when Brown’s solo net rating (+9.2) exceeded his and Tatum’s (+7.8) while he oversaw a 122.8 offensive rating. The the last time Brown faced major questions about his future in Boston, 2023, answered them by cutting down on his turnovers.

 

Brown went on to win east finals and NBA Finals MVP awards in 2024, though the difference splits between Tatum’s dominant solo lineups (+18.6), their units together (+6.9) and Brown’s (+5.8) returned. Finally, another playmaking leap allowed the Celtics to thrive as much with Brown (+11.5) on the floor as much as Tatum (+11.4) in 2025.

Of course, complementary talent as strong as any team has ever had aided both stars over the past two seasons, with Derrick White, Jrue Holiday and others as willing and able to take steps back offensively while finding other ways to dominate the game, setting up Brown and Tatum as well as any role players in recent history. Kristaps Porziņģis, in particular, gave Brown a sizable passing outlet he leaned on regularly.

“I think it’s also a credit to my development,” Brown said in December amid a bump in his passing stats. “I improve on things. A lot of my weaknesses in the past I’ve attacked. So being able to run a team and an offense, I look forward to those moments.”

White and a rapidly emerging Payton Pritchard remain in Boston to help Brown, who will need to play more point, defend larger players and rebound more consistently to fill areas they’ll miss with Tatum. In turn, he’ll need to lean on teammates to avoid absorbing all the pressure himself. Defenses will turn up the heat to force turnovers on a Celtics offense that rarely gave the ball away to begin Joe Mazzulla’s coaching tenure.

In turn, Mazzulla will need to find ways to alter the offense to suit Brown’s strengths, running and cutting offensively while attacking on defense, while minimizing his weaknesses, ball control, pull-up three point shooting and off-ball defense. Brown doesn’t size up the defense as methodically as Tatum, and he, Pritchard and White all share a love for playing on the run. That didn’t happen enough last year and will need to without Tatum’s gravity to create half court opportunities.

“Pace is something we always try to strive for, but sometimes when you have certain players who are really good at matchups and ISO ball and stuff like that, you tend to go to that sometimes, but with this unit we have, we should emphasize pace and getting up the floor. We got a lot of people who like to play in the open space and stuff like that. So this group will definitely push it,” Pritchard said in May after Tatum’s injury.

 

“Jayson is an unbelievable player, and he’s a great player that can attack isolations and matchups. When you have a stud like that, you take advantage of that. We don’t have that no more, so now we need to transition to more pace, more off-ball, more stuff like that. It doesn’t mean some of us aren’t capable of attacking, it’s just J.T. is at another level.”

It’s squarely on Brown to capitalize on his new role. Stevens has stressed that they expect to compete every night despite the step back in talent. Leadership will include embracing criticism Brown will wear when things don’t go well, continuing to adapt to what’s best for the team and trusting younger teammates. The Celtics didn’t put him in an ideal position to succeed. He’ll need to make the most of their remaining talent anyway.

Brown began that process by making himself visible throughout the summer, almost selling himself, greeting Boston fans, students and young basketball players in a variety of public appearances. He returned to the floor quickly following surgery to address a partial meniscus tear and additional fluid that built-up while playing through the pain last spring. Brown became a shell of himself at times late last year, he couldn’t move, but managed some big performances. He’s never shied away from accepting the greater, more vocal side of leadership to Tatum’s lead-by-example approach.

Now, it’s all on his plate, and the weight of the challenge in front of him struck him during a recent stream he hosted.

“It feels like a new era,” Brown said. “Half the team is gone. I wish them the best. I appreciate them. They were great teammates, so it’s kind of sad to see them go. It’s a new era, everything has kind of changed and shifted.”

There’s still enough here, barring injury, to reach the postseason in the Eastern Conference and Brown showed enough, in moments, to prove he can lead a team. He’ll now need to do it every night to get Boston there.

This is what he wanted.

“It takes sacrifice on my behalf,” Brown said in 2023. “It’s definitely a lot of opportunities that you can be a guy. But the ultimate goal for me and Jayson has always been to win games.”