Jaylen Brown was traded in part because of his advanced stats. These numbers show his worth to the Sixers so far.
Brown has contributed to the Sixers’ 9-2 start thanks to his on-ball defense and by reducing his turnover rate to a career-best figure.
In general, the 76ers have been cautious when talking about their 9-2 start.
How, even with their record, there is still a lot of work for this group to do. Nobody has been more vocal in that regard than Jaylen Brown.
After Sunday’s win over the Bulls, Brown was asked how the team has had so few growing pains in its first 11 games.
“You don’t think we got growing pains?” Brown said.
“I mean, from our perspective, it’s been some growing pains for sure,” Brown continued. “Even though we’ve been able to win, we still got a lot better to get, a lot more to improve on. So, the result, we’re not so much fixated on the result, it’s more so about the process. We got to improve our process and our mentality to create a winning environment.”
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On Tuesday, Brown will face a team with whom he played winning basketball for a decade in the Boston Celtics, including winning the 2024 title and NBA Finals MVP. Then this summer, debate raged around the league at just how much Brown contributed to that winning environment, as analysts and front office executives picked over his advanced metrics, particularly, his advanced on/off court splits, like the Zapruder film (on/off data measures how much better or worse a team performs with a certain player on the court vs. off it).
Ahead of Tuesday’s game, it’s worth looking at a few statistics to see how much Brown has contributed to Sixers’ 9-2 start, even as he and the team say there are still growing pains.
On/off data
The on/off court data from the advanced statistical website Cleaning the Glass factors out garbage time, to give a more meaningful snapshot of a player’s value in that metric. It doesn’t run those stats through an advanced analytical stew the way front offices might, but it still provides a decent enough picture of a player’s contributions, even if they should be taken with a grain of salt.
Through 11 games, Brown is a plus-6.7, meaning the Sixers are 6.7 points better with him on the floor than with him off it. That would be the second-best mark of Brown’s career if it held up over a full season. By comparison, last season he was a minus-5.6 while enjoying the best statistical season of his career, which was a starting point for the discussion around Brown, especially given his supermax contract status and averages of 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds and 5.1 assists.
Defense
One of the main reasons Brown is a positive in this metric this season is his willingness to take on tough assignments for the Sixers defense, which is fifth in defensive rating, according to Cleaning the Glass.
According to NBA tracking compiled by the website jackborman.com, nobody on the Sixers has guarded the opposing team’s star player more than Brown. Brown has guarded a star player, defined by the league’s top 30 players in usage (generally the players who shoot and get to the free-throw line the most), on 21.6% of possessions. That’s slightly higher than VJ Edgecombe’s 20.1%.
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According to this metric, Brown has “saved” an average of 6.9 points per 100 possessions thanks to his defense on these players. That’s considered a very good mark and a significant number in a lot of close games, considering Brown defends a good chunk of these possessions.
By comparison, Edgecombe is at plus-4.7. As an aside, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is having a great start to the season in this regard. He has guarded a star player on 16.2% of possessions and saved 8.4 points per 100 possessions.
Usage and turnover rate
In order to assimilate to the Sixers, Brown has given up a significant chunk of the usage he had last season with the Celtics when Jayson Tatum was on the mend from an Achilles injury. Brown had a usage rate of 36.6%, per Cleaning the Glass. Brown has been just fine sacrificing some usage; that number is down to 25.3% this season, which would mark his lowest usage rate since the 2019-20 season.
Along with this, Brown has reduced his turnovers, a constant point of contention for his detractors, like current Celtics analyst Brian Scalabrine, who took a jab at Brown on a recent broadcast in response to Brown saying Tatum had a great public relations team.
“Now if I was doing P.R. work for Jayson Tatum, I would remind everybody who led the league in turnovers last year,” Scalabrine said.
Well, Brown played in 71 games and had the ball in his hands a lot, more than any point in his career. So it follows that his total number of turnovers was high. In terms of his turnover rate per 100 possessions, the discussion is more nuanced. That was at 12.4%, according to Cleaning the Glass, which ranked in the 38th percentile. In other words, it was below average, but it wasn’t league worst.
This season, Brown has a turnover rate of 9.6%, which would be the best mark of his career and is in the 74th percentile of all players, a very good mark that bests almost three-quarters of the league. That turnover rate has contributed a league-best 12.9 turnovers per game overall for the Sixers.
Inquirer beat reporters Gina Mizell and Chris Hine go behind the scenes of covering LeBron James, Jaylen Brown and the Sixers’ star-studded roster, and debate what’s real and not real about the team’s hot start. Watch here.
Watch the full interview below and subscribe to the Sixers Extra podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
