Jayson Tatum’s post prowess, Jaylen Brown’s playmaking and more from Celtics’ road trip
It was a Monday night on League Pass in Charlotte , the kind of game Jayson Tatum knows deserves a true performance . He delivered, putting up 45 points, 13 rebounds and six assists in the Boston Celtics’ 121-118 overtime loss. And while they collapsed in the late fourth quarter to blow what should’ve been made for an undefeated road trip, Tatum continued to show over the past week how defenses are finding it impossible to take him out of the game.
His return to form in the post from his high school days has been one of the notable shifts in how he and the team operate this season, but there was one post-up in the second quarter that showed a lot about how he has grown.
Good things happen when you're attacking like this pic.twitter.com/fgjlNyR4tg— Boston Celtics November 21, 2023
What makes this play distinct? First off, this was an isolation in the corner, the kind of play where he would often hang a low crossover before getting to the stepback 3 everyone saw coming. But he’s now trusting his strength enough to start backing down players early to push his way out of that corner then have more room to make a move to the basket.
The half-turn that used to work a little bit for him is now leaving guys in the dust, and his athleticism at the rim has grown so much that he’s now going for two-handed posters to at least draw a foul in case he doesn’t get an absurdly lucky bounce.
Compare that to his first bit of NBA action in the 2017 summer league when he tried the same move. Watch how the defender gives him room and he doesn’t ever get into the body, making his half-spin useless since he can’t actually get a hand on the defender’s hip to get past him. Six years later, Tatum is legitimately posting up instead of just spinning in circles.
The play Monday in Charlotte was a good example of how he can read his matchup to know he can’t back Miles Bridges down into the paint, so he used a blend of footwork and speed to still get through him. But what about when Tatum has a small on him he can actually move? Sometimes he will try to throw a shoulder into their chest until he gets into the paint, but he’s showing more creativity to subtly compromise the defender.
Here he’s got David Roddy in Memphis, who is almost half a foot shorter but has 30-40 pounds on Tatum. When it was Bridges on him, Tatum knew the defender had the length and athleticism to contest his shots or stand up to Tatum backing him down, so he used speed to his advantage. In this matchup, Roddy is a stout defender who can cut off the drive but doesn’t have the length to contest the shot. So Tatum does several things to get to the spot he wants.
Jay with the fadeaway pic.twitter.com/Wpzf01tf1m— Boston Celtics November 20, 2023
It starts with Tatum catching the ball deep in the corner, making it hard for the Grizzlies to double. As he makes his first turn, he looks off the help defender to ensure he’s got a one-on-one. Then as he pivots toward Roddy, he does the Kevin Durant low-ball swing to force Roddy to take his hand off Tatum’s inside hip. It takes away some of Roddy’s leverage and angles him more toward the middle of the paint once Tatum backs him down.
That way, when Tatum hits him with the subtle push off to the ribs, Roddy is stumbling in the opposite direction of where Tatum is going with his baseline fadeaway. It clears Tatum’s sight line to the basket and means Roddy can’t get his hand in front of the release, giving Tatum all the comfort he needs to bury the shot.
In the past, Tatum would typically try to expend his energy bodying the defender to get to a spot or just face up and take a pull-up jumper. Back at the beginning of his career, Tatum would just try to bump a few times then shoot a Dirk Nowitzki one-legged fadeaway from whatever direction he was already facing.
He made both shots. He was that good at the lower levels. Then he got to the regular season, and the defenders were so much smarter, stronger and bigger that he had to ditch basically his entire bag of moves over those first few seasons. Remember in his second year when he tried to reintroduce his post game, looked like a mess and fans started to wonder if his game could translate to the league?
That was only five years ago. Two seasons ago, he was 40th in post-up efficiency among the 43 players in the league who had 100 post-ups, per Synergy Sports. He currently ranks second in the league for the second straight year even though he’s more than doubled the number of post-ups per game, trailing only his teammate Kristaps Porziņģis . Joe Mazzulla wanted to play through the post more this year, and Tatum is leading that charge.
The ups and downs of Brown’s playmaking
There’s good, there’s bad, and there’s certainly ugly when Jaylen Brown is handling the rock right now. After securing the record extension this summer, he’s been under a microscope now that he’s no longer underpaid. The team has been so good that it’s gone mostly under the radar, but there are some promising developments and some concerning trends in Brown’s game management as of late.
First is the good, as his instincts for how to move the defense to open up bolder passes are improving. One of his best passes of the year came late in the first quarter Monday in Charlotte, when he got the ball in early offense with a cross match on P.J. Washington. Instead of trying to break Washington down with a crazy dribbling sequence, he attacked hard off the catch, drove across the paint to draw over all the help he could, then skied in the air and immediately launched a kick-out pass to Sam Hauser right on the money.
The sharpshooter missed the shot — a rarity these days — and leaving his feet to make that pass was risky since he was betting that Hauser’s defender would crash down to help on Luke Kornet . But it was a good play that showed his mapping of the court early in possessions is getting better.
Brown is an elite fast-break scorer and now he’s showing some more advanced game management reads when the team is just in regular ol’ transition. On this play in Toronto, Brown sees he has a cross match on Dennis Schröder and immediately takes him to the midpost. The improvement here is how Brown waits for the double to come and puts himself in the perfect position to drop it off to Porziņģis.
But Brown’s tunnel vision in crunch time has been a red flag. It was one thing when he missed this easy drop-off to Porziņģis or a kick out to a wide-open Sam Hauser to try to posterize a dangerous rim protector in Mark Williams .
The irony is this was actually a second chance opportunity after Brown hit a wide-open Hauser on the pick-and-roll and Hauser missed. But then with the game tied in the final minute of overtime, when Porziņģis was standing alone in the paint and Brown launched a contested 3 instead. Brown probably wanted to get the shot off to maintain the two-for-one possession advantage in the final 30 seconds, but there’s got to be enough patience to see you have three players open on this play.
There are even times when he runs a play that works perfectly to get the team’s best shooter wide-open, but he gets himself into a tight spot and forgets to look for the outlet on time. Or he’ll have the ball in a late-clock situation and take a contested shot when Porziņģis is setting a screen to tee Tatum up to step into an open 3.
It’s one thing to compare his playmaking to Tatum, who has clearly taken the leap in that department, but this is just basic court vision stuff that any star-level ballhandler should pull off. And it’s not like Tatum hasn’t had some ugly stretches, especially when he starts launching heat checks when he’s leading a second unit that looks lost offensively. Brown is one of the best contested shot-makers in the game and is great at creating a look for himself out of nowhere.
The issue is he’s missing some of the easier plays that he is actually doing a solid job creating in part because he can hit those tough shots. Or maybe he just knew Porziņģis would somehow magically tip the miss back in. Lucky break, but the process needs to improve now that he has to live up to the enormous price tag. There’s enough scoring on this team to get by, so what the Celtics really need is for Brown to make the right decision more than he makes a spectacular play.
(Photo: Greg Fiume / )
