Jaylen Brown On Fire as Celtics Face Uncertain Playoff Seeding

BOSTON — Jaylen Brown might be playing the best basketball of his career with the Celtics less than two weeks away from hosting an undetermined playoff opponent as one of the east’s top seeds.

As Jayson Tatum finished a fiery two-month run of 29-point-per-game scoring in late March, Brown unleashed a seismic dunk on Maxi Kleber before embracing Kevin Garnett on his way down in an otherwise uneven performance. Brown’s aggression grew and efficiency dropped through his first full season as Boston’s second option. A practice in changing habits.

Turnovers, inefficiency, stalled dribble drives due to a head-down approach marked his progress to this point, alongside injuries, with another ankle turn against Memphis stalling a hot scoring run. Then, his game took off through a scoring-focused west coast trip where Brown averaged 27.8 PPG and 1.0 APG.

The Celtics prefer if Brown would continue to harness his playmaking skills and generate more assists to actually render his run a leap. Particularly now, as his string of 25 or more points in nine straight games — with 30 or more in five of them — forced teams to double and blitz him too, after initial actions to take Tatum off the ball. He noticed that during the road trip, speeding up his decision making and returning him to his past constant shooting splits over 50%.

Brown scored 32 points in back-to-back wins over the Pacers and Wizards over the weekend, shooting 24-for-35 from the field, and raising the question of whether his finishing, scoring ability and downhill gravity should be his focus, allowing more natural playmakers around to set him up closer to the basket. Brown caught some difficult passes around the basket to score on quick post-moves before doing his best Robert Williams III impression catching alley-oops into layups.

“He can score in so many ways,” Ime Udoka told CLNS Media after the Celtics mashed the Wizards, 144-102. “So it’s not just Jaylen, it’s us learning how to use him as well and put him in certain positions. I think we’ve learned our team well, and we all have certain plays we like to run for these guys and Jaylen can do it all. I mean pick-and-roll, isolation, post-up, off-ball. He can kind of run the gamut as far as scoring and it’s just a matter of matchups. Now that we’ve tightened things up and we have certain plays we like to run for these guys. It’s just how the flow of the game’s going, how teams are guarding and the matchups that they have.”

Washington’s Swiss cheese triumvirate of Rui Hachimura, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Corey Kispert gave Brown and Tatum plenty of opportunities to isolate one-on-one, score quickly into the offensive zone and get their shooting hands free. He left Hachimura at the three-point line after turning up the jets here.

Brown, who’s struggled to shoot from deep relative to earlier in his career, had pulled out some nasty reverse layups driving downhill last week.

By Sunday afternoon, he was dribbling like Jame Harden into step-back threes and bouncing around screens into pull ups to convert his first five shot attempts.

Brown shot 5-for-6 with 13 points in the first quarter, and is now tied for 10th with 7.4 PPG in the first. His role seems to be coming into focus, teammates are looking for him as a cutter consistently, as does Boston’s rotation with Brown as a second-unit initiator and feel for the game alongside Tatum. He’s playing closer to the basket and consistently making himself available. Corner Jaylen, lost in the shuffle, is a thing of the past. Even if his occasional trouble off the dribble and turnovers persist.

Tatum started slow and leaned into a playmaking roll, finding Brown with sharp feeds behind the defense as the two not only continue to utilize each other in the passing game, they’re both methodically taking 18 shots per game over their last nine and averaging 28.9 PPG. Brown’s shooting 56.7% and Tatum’s 54.9% from the field, three games from playing their first playoff series together since 2020 due to Brown’s 2021 wrist surgery.

“(Brown)’s in a great rhythm right now,” Derrick White told CLNS at practice on Monday. “Doing a lot of great things for us, so any chance I can get him the ball, get him an advantage, wherever it might be. He does a great job of moving without the basketball, so just trying to find him on those cuts and get him some easy ones. That’s all I’m trying to do. He’s obviously playing really well right now.”

Payton Pritchard, Grant Williams and White have shared the court in staggered second units alongside Brown and Daniel Theis, with the Celtics beginning to focus in on Theis as a starter after initially plugging in Williams in the first full effort without Robert Williams III against Miami. Brown and Tatum trade rests late in the first and third quarters, key windows for Brown to facilitate as his touches continue to outpace White’s by 59.1 to to 49.2 per game.

Encouragingly, Brown has settled into Udoka’s quick-decision offense, either turning the corner toward the basket or dumping off a pass with an average of 3.68 seconds per touch of his last nine games. That outpaces other Celtics ball-handlers like Tatum, White and Marcus Smart over that stretch.

Brown has posted at least five assists in four of his last five games, six to Al Horford, five to Smart, four to Pritchard and four to Theis. White and Williams scored 33 points on Wednesday, with 14 more from Pritchard as Boston’s current rotation looks at least ready on the offensive end to sustain without Williams III after a sloppy start against Miami.

“I didn’t have one assist,” Brown said in Denver late last month. “People might’ve gotten on me about that earlier in the season, but playing the right way. Drawing doubles. Making the right plays and the ball is falling in the net. So continuing to be ourselves and play the right way and getting good team wins and just taking what the game give you. You can’t control that teams are guarding you certain ways, you’ve just got to play basketball and that’s what we’re doing.”

Udoka told CLNS at shootaround over the weekend that the Celtics’ starters will be dictated by a playoff matchups and made it sound like Boston will play out its schedule and rise as high in the standings as possible until the team’s seeding is set. The Celtics’ win over Washington momentarily positioned the team into the No. 2 seed by 0.5 games over Milwaukee and Philadelphia, while Toronto’s loss to Miami that night effectively clinched home-court advantage in the first round. Finding some cohesion is important for the new starting unit, too.

Boston projects to secure tiebreakers over its two remaining competitors in the standings, with Chicago, Toronto and the 7-8 matchup that’s forming around the Cavaliers hosting the Hawks, Hornets, or Nets. A matchup against the Raptors would raise the question of Boston’s vaccination status, vaguely addressed by Brown, Horford and Udoka, who all said the team will be ready to play anywhere in the postseason. COVID-19 vaccination is required to cross the border into Canada. Brown, Horford and Tatum stayed home from the team’s trip to play the Raptors last week.

Tatum confirmed he’s vaccinated in the preseason, while Brown and Horford didn’t address the question, Brown on Sunday citing his NBPA vice president status despite others in the same role discussing their own status.

The Celtics will need their full component of depth to compete in a hypothetical Raptors series without Williams III, and with any player needing to start their two-week vaccination process within days to be ready for a Game 3 north of the border, the team declined to comment when ESPN asked about their status. Miami and Milwaukee, by contrast, confirmed their full availability for games in Toronto.

“I think his growth has been big,” Udoka said of Brown’s run with the postseason looming. “Not only from a scoring standpoint, but getting those assists up, and he’s understanding, as well, it’s not just Jayson that’s doubled. He’s going to see crowds every night and when you’re scoring 24-25 per game, teams are going to load up on you as well, and so he’s improved in that area vastly.”