Jaylen Brown is playing the best basketball of his career right now and the Boston Celtics are benefiting from it.
Over the last eight games, Brown has scored at least 18-points, averaging 24.1 points per game during that span on 55.4 percent shooting and also grabbed 5.7 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game.
Brown’s last eight games scoring numbers:
- 18-points vs Washington
- 20-points vs Miami
- 19-points vs Brooklyn
- 21-points vs Chicago
- 30-points vs New York
- 31-points vs Philadelphia
- 25-points vs Dallas
- 29-points vs Golden State
- 21-points vs Cleveland
On Sunday against the Golden State Warriors, Brown connected on three straight 3-pointers in the span of 58 seconds midway through the first quarter. Brown finished the frame with 19-points.
Brown is also playing a hard-nosed blue collar defense while most often being assigned to the opposing team’s best player or any star that he plays against. In recent games, he’s defended Luka Doncic, Jamal Murray, Jimmy Butler, and Steph Curry and Jonathon Kuminga in Boston’s last game.
Brown made a promise to himself before the start of the season to make the All-Defensive First Team. Near the end of December, Brown said that he’s living up to his promise.
“I feel like I’m playing some of the best defense of my career. I made a commitment before the season, I wanted to be first team and I feel like I’ve been living up to that.”
Brown’s not wrong, he’s certainly been playing up to an All-NBA level on defense. Brown has a 43.3 defensive field goal percentage, which is the best of his career and second on the Celtics behind Kristaps Porzingis this season.
He’s defending 10.6 field goal attempts per game this season, most of which are 2-pointers at 6.1 per game.
It’s worth mentioning that Jayson Tatum also averages 10.6 defended field goal attempts per game, but Tatum is averaging a higher defended field goal percentage than Brown this season (46.8%). In fact, Brown averages the least amount of made shots out of Boston’s starting-five.
Brown has been phenomenal on both ends of the court this season and it’s led the Celtics to the best record in the NBA, not to mention a winning brand of basketball as well.
JB should make an All-NBA Defensive Team this season.
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Photo Credit: Adam Glanzman, Getty Images
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