BOSTON — Jaylen Brown averaged 1.6 assists per game during his first full season as a starter (2017-18) with the Celtics. Seven years later he’s nearly tripled that average (4.6 assists per game) through the first 22 games of the Celtics 2024-25 season.
That type of growth was on display Wednesday night as Brown dished out a season-high nine assists for the Celtics in a 130-120 victory over the Pistons at TD Garden. With Jayson Tatum (knee) and Jrue Holiday (knee) sidelined, the ball was in Brown’s hands a lot more offensively to initiate offense and his improved court vision was on display during a high-powered Celtics scoring night.
Brown scored 16 of his game-high 28 points in the first quarter but from there shifted into a facilitator for much of his offensive impact. It’s an area the All-Star has clearly taken pride in after starting his career with tunnel vision on most possessions.
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“I’ve improved on things,” Brown said after the win. “A lot of my weaknesses in the past I’ve attacked. So being able to run a team and an offense is something that I look forward to in those moments. Obviously, on our team you won’t see it as much because we’ve got a lot of guys that are ball dominant and that are really good players. But in these moments, you gotta step up and make plays.
“Tonight, I was just trying to get my teammates involved, especially in the second half. I didn’t think we shot it as well in the second half, but we got a plethora of good looks.”
The Celtics scored 30+ points in three quarters with Brown at the helm and Joe Mazzulla has clearly gained a stronger trust in him of late taking a bigger role in running the offense .
“It’s been fun to him grow over the last few years in his reads,” Mazzulla said. “If you’re watching, you’ll see him be able to process the game in real time and see the adjustments that are being made on him and recognizing the matchup, recognizing the spacing. I think he’s gotten better – a couple times that I was like ‘Get what you want.’ He dictates the defense, and he plays at a pace to where he can get to the spacing that he wants, he knows the shots that he wants. So he works out every day and it’s fun watching him just continue to grow in the game and understand it in real time and get better. And it’s fun talking to him during the game about it too.”
The numbers for Brown are far more encouraging beyond Wednesday’s win. His assist rate of 19.5 percent is clearly the third best on the roster, only behind Jayson Tatum and Derrick White. That’s a career-high for him and a significant jump from last season where he ranked fifth on the roster. Brown’s turnover rate has also stayed steady despite the increased playmaking with the best assist/turnover ratio of his career.
Brown has happily stepped aside in recent nights when Payton Pritchard has had the hot hand and he purposefully tried to feed Kristaps Porzingis at several points in the Pistons win to reward his defensive work. That unselfishness led to praise from the big man after the win.
“I think he did a great job tonight,” Porzingis said. ‘He was like he was exerting a lot of energy just to create, just to get downhill. And of course, they’re trying to be physical with him. But his physicality, his motor is like, he’s an animal, I’m not gonna lie. And he’s guarding, and he’s getting downhill looking for a kick out. And all of these kick outs are, like, it might not even be an assist for him, but it’s like a hockey pass.
“He kicks out, it’s the next guy in the corner, boom, corner 3, this, this. I think sometimes it even goes unnoticed but he’s JB. We almost expect this from him, but he’s really really good.”
With Brown’s hip woes seemingly in the rear view mirror, he looks poised for another All-Star selection. More importantly for Boston, Brown is becoming more of a team player than ever and that’s bad news for Celtics opponents. The team’s supporting cast is turning into bigger offensive weapons with Payton Pritchard and Derrick White having breakout seasons and Brown’s embracing finding those guys to help Boston’s offense reach greater heights.
