Three major ways the Celtics’ offense changes without Jaylen Brown

With the news that Jaylen Brown's hip flexor injury will keep him out of at least one more contest, I wanted to examine how the team's attack changes without him on the floor. Brown's injury has clearly been impacting his play (his field goal percentages are far worse from nearly everywhere on the court), so hopefully, some rest will do him good.

However, the show goes on. If you include last year, we have a pretty good sample of how the team's style changes without Brown, so let's break it down.

Less rim pressure and fewer freebies Jaylen Brown leads the Celtics in drives per game this season with 13.3 , nearly twice as many as Jayson Tatum's second-place 7.6 (the gap wasn't as wide last year, but Brown still led with 10.1 to Tatum's 9.1).

In a related note, Synergy says that Boston only ran eight isolations as a team in each of the Atlanta and the Charlotte games; they'd averaged 15.8 in the six games prior.

And, of course, fewer drives mean fewer free throws. The Celtics are far more likely to draw a whistle when Brown is on the court. He generates plenty of free throws himself, but forcing the defense into rotation also makes it easier for other Celtics to attack out-of-position defenders and draw free throws, too.

More passing If you have fewer isolations, it makes sense you'd have more passes, right? This might be the change that's most visible to the naked eye.

In general, Boston's offense is not particularly pass-heavy, ranking in the bottom half of the league each year of coach Joe Mazzulla's tenure. Of course, that's not an indictment of the record-breaking offensive system; the Celtics simply don't need to work as hard as other teams to manufacture a good shot!

Brown's role is to be a play-finisher far more than a playmaker, and he has the lowest number of net passes on the team ( he receives 46 passes per game but only makes 31 ). Without Brown's ability to get to the rim, though, the team does have to manufacture more openings through passing rather than on-ball creation. In the previous two games without Brown, the team averaged nearly 15 more passes per game . That's not good or bad, but it is noteworthy.

An uptick in threes To compensate for the lack of Brown's on-ball creation, the team shoots oodles more threes — this year, the Celtics' three-point attempt rate goes up 9.9% when Brown is off the floor, a humongous change in shot diet. It was more than a 5% change last year. (This partially explains the fewer free throw attempts Boston draws without Brown, as well).

Losing Brown redistributes his shots to the Celtics' other capable players, every one of whom (minus Luke Kornet and Neemias Queta) has shot more than half of their attempts from three (compared to Brown's relatively low 30%). Sixth Man of the Year candidate Payton Pritchard has seen his scoring leap from 14.7 points with Brown to 20 in the two games without him despite playing an identical minutes load, and it was an even bigger jump last year!

So, to summarize, the Celtics lean even more into their long-distance marksmanship, although it requires a little more passing to get there. The team's offense has never struggled with or without Brown (they went 12-0 without him last year and are undefeated in two games this year), but it looks a little different.

Brown's head-down drives to the basket are a vital source of Celtics offense, particularly on the rare nights the three-pointer isn't falling. In the playoffs, having as many ways to score as possible remains paramount. But for the regular season, we have ample evidence to suggest that the team can survive without him for short spurts.