The Morning After: Celtics Learn Some Lessons vs. Clippers

The Celtics secured a hard-fought win over a plucky Clippers team.

It wasn’t pretty, but the Celtics are 2-2 to open their latest West Coast road trip. An overtime win over a plucky and undermanned LA Clippers team means Boston will be heading into tonight’s game against the Los Angeles Lakers with some momentum behind them.

Ty Lue’s team came into this one with a lengthy injury report. Most notably, there was no Kawhi Leonard or James Harden. However, Derrick Jones Jr. and Kevin Porter Jr. both decided that meant they could step up and act like All-Star talents.

In fairness, the Celtics weren’t at full strength, either. Al Horford, Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday were all sidelined for the night. Due to the trio’s absence, we got to see some of the deeper bench rotation eat substantial minutes, with Baylor Scheierman, Jordan Walsh and Jaden Springer all getting a chance to impress. Of course, it was Springer who ended up stealing the show — more on that later.

Nevertheless, this was a game where I came away feeling like we learned something about potential changes that could or need to be made. I want to start with…

Jaylen Brown being a playmaker

Before diving in, I highly recommend reading John Karalis’ piece on this in the Boston Sports Journal. I don’t think I need to tell anyone how great John's job is, but I thought his piece on this subject (which was specifically based on Brown moving back into his first-quarter role from last season) was great!

To add my 10 cents in here, I thought this game was a great example of Brown needing to be the play finisher he’s proven himself to be. Instead, he continued spending stretches as the spearhead of the second unit, and the Clippers looked to pressure him whenever possible. The result was a 6-assist and 5-turnover game.

For me, that’s always been the problem with asking Brown to be among the team’s primary playmakers. It’s not that he can’t do it, it’s that his assist-to-turnover ratio tells you that he is better used in other ways. During his career, Brown has dished out 1481 regular-season assists. He’s also registered 1277 regular-season turnovers. That’s an AST/TOV ratio of 1.16, meaning he’s only marginally above a 1:1 ratio — that’s not sustainable when being tasked with running the offense.

In fairness, Brown has taken a significant leap in his playmaking in recent years, as seen by this graph.

That’s why it made no sense to me when Joe Mazzulla drew up an action to give Brown the ball in one of the final ATOs (after time-outs) of the fourth quarter.

Brown is elite at multiple things on the basketball court. However, years of data tell us he’s not the best at making reads in traffic or when under pressure. By giving him the ball in this situation, with multiple defenders close enough to trap him and the baseline limiting his ability to escape, you were asking for trouble.

Boston would have been better served to have Brown one or two passes away and to feature him as the guy to finish the action. He’s almost unstoppable when cutting off the catch and building momentum downhill. Why he’s being asked to play a role that doesn’t mesh with his best skills has left me scratching my head this season. I mean, it would have been more logical to have him as a screen and roll guy than asking him to create in this specific situation.

I think the version we saw of Brown last season, where he attacked first and created second, was the ideal version of him. The ball feels like it sticks to much when he’s asked to generate offense for others. It pings to and from him when he’s asked to be a score-first threat.

That doesn’t mean we didn’t see some good stuff, though