Celts17Pride wrote:The Comedian wrote:Jaylen has made a huge jump as a player, himself. Clearly is going to be an all star this year, and probably a lot more over the years.
But the next, and most important step to his game is elevating guys around him, and becoming a real positive impact player. I’ve learned not to doubt him, but it’s a necessary step if he is going to be the player this franchise needs him to be.
To be fair the lineups that Brad Stevens used the other night we’re horrid. Stevens had Brown play with trash and then put Walker in and sat Brown. Walker then played with trash.
Hard to make anyone better.
Walker or Brown would be playing with 4 others Green, Ojeleye, G Williams and Thompson. Larry Bird would struggle to make them better
This is partially true, and this has nothing to do with Jaylen versus Tatum, but the Tatum/Bench lineups have destroyed the league last year and so far this season. JT has consistently shown that he elevates everyone around him, whether starters or bench players. A large part of that is defenses double/trap Tatum on basically every possession, and his team defense being so good. Last year the main Tatum bench lineups had a +19 net rating, this year its +26, obviously small sample as opposed to last year.
A lot of guys can put up great raw numbers, but the truly elite players make everyone around them better, and are bigtime positive impact players. That’s the next step for Jaylen, sooner or later I expect defenses to start to double and crowd him when Tatum sits, and it will get other guys tons of open looks. And as he has shown this year, if he sees the open guy he will hit them. My only real concern with Jaylen longterm is how much will he improve as a team defender. He’s fantastic on ball, and even better defending the post, but he has to get much better within the defensive scheme. This isn’t all on Jaylen of course, more goes into it. Who he plays with, the lack of high end bench depth, but as of this point in his career, he just hasn’t been a legitimate difference maker.
I hope nobody takes this as anti Jaylen, because it’s far from the case. He’s shown he can be an all star level player. I’m just saying what needs to happen next for him to become an elite player. We all had somewhat similar conversations about Tatum going into last season, about what he needed to do to improve his game. It’s not knocking guys, they are just graded on a much higher curve than role players.
That midranger is money.
