Bill Simmons: Jaylen Brown wants to be traded to Houston?

Brown and Green are not comparable at all. Brown is a legitimate top 20 NBA player.

 

More like Top 10 NBA player. He’s one of the best 2 way player in the game

 

That poor strawman is getting beat up for no reason.

 

He would be the only top ten player who's a worse playmaker than Green.

 

I don't see it. I've been doing a deep dive into his stats just to double check my assumptions about his value, and if anything, I've come out of it lower on him than I was before. Here's how Brown performs on various advanced statistics this season:

RAPTOR: #77
Value Over Replacement Player: #56
Win Shares: #82
PER: #50
True Shooting Percentage: #106
Defensive Rating: #78

Don't get me wrong, I do think all of these underrate his value, because I think his defense is more valuable than it's being given credit for, and advanced statistics still don't do a great job of capturing D (especially on the perimeter). But it's telling that only one of these measures even has him in the top 50, and even then literally 50th.

I think two things are really hurting his value: One, he is just not a good playmaker/passer. His assist-to-turnover ratio is really, really mediocre. And two, while he's pretty efficient, he's not anywhere near the top of the league in scoring efficiency.

I don't think it will actually be that hard for Green to reach Brown's level as an offensive player within the next couple seasons. Now, as a defender... that's another story entirely.

 

There are 10 kids drafted every year in the top 10 .... if one of them becomes top 20ish player he's an outlier, not the norm.

You guys are acting as if its guaranteed or somehow probable that Jalen Green becomes a top 20 player or better.

Look, I see the potential too but I don't think its likely that he becomes that top 20 player because of his limitations - watching the past two years and the fact that he was less efficient this year than last.
He's not a great shooter by any stretch of the imagination, shooting .005 better from 3 than Sengun .338 vs .333 and that's terrible for a guard particularly one in an offense that generated a very high volume of open / wide open shots from distance.
He's got one trait that's elite being his first step ..... but he doesn't finish well when he does get there.

It's more likely he ends up Gary Trent jr than Jaylen Brown - a good player, not a great one.

 

This is true, but Jalen Green is not a top 10 pick, he is a top 2 pick. The outcomes generally rise significantly the closer you get to the top of the draft.

Here are all the top 2 picks from 2008-2017 (ten drafts, going six seasons back from the present so we can feel confident of players' outcomes) and what level they (so far) ended up reaching at their peaks.

Derrick Rose: MVP, All-NBA 1st team
Michael Beasley: Roleplayer
Blake Griffin: All-NBA 2nd team
Hasheem Thabeet: Bust
John Wall: All-NBA 3rd team
Evan Turner: Roleplayer
Kyrie Irving: All-NBA 2nd team
Derrick Williams: Bust
Anthony Davis: All-NBA 1st team
Michael Kidd-Gilchrist: Bust
Anthony Bennett: Bust
Victor Oladipo: All-NBA 3rd team
Andrew Wiggins: All-Star
Jabari Parker: Roleplayer
Karl-Anthony Towns: All-NBA 3rd team
D'Angelo Russell: All-Star
Ben Simmons: All-NBA 3rd team
Brandon Ingram: All-Star
Markelle Fultz: Roleplayer
Lonzo Ball: Roleplayer

So 40% ended up on all-NBA teams at least once, which Jaylen Brown still has yet to do. If you remove the busts from the pool (admittedly arbitrarily chosen), which is a bar I think Green has sufficiently cleared at this point barring some career-ruining injury--knock on wood--the number who made at least one all-NBA team rises to 50%.

I would not say it is "probable" that Green is that good. But I think there's a solid chance.

As to your specific criticisms: They are fair as far as they go, but you have to adjust for age. He was the #1 scoring option on a bad NBA team with no real point guard at an age when he would have been a sophomore in college basketball. His performance when adjusted for age and context was seriously impressive and people need to stop assuming he can't improve further.

 

This place is really starting to remind me of the Knicks fanbase of 2018

"Once we get zion, and Durant and Irving sign we will be top of the east..."

It pays to keep expectations in check.

 

I Am not acting like Green will become whatever, all I asked is where was Brown ranked after his second season in and you decided to ignore it and go on about Green shooting / players drafted etc

Brown wasn't a great shooter first two years and I wouldn't call him great at it now but nicely improved

 

Jalen only fans becoming Jaylen Brown haters. Y’all are something else lol

 

More like anti Green fanatics vs. pro Brown fanatics, they are something else

 

And you got anti Green fanatics who call him the worst defensive player and inefficient chucker but he will headline the trade for a so called top 20 player

Just a year removed when the anti Green fanatics claimed he was basically the worst player in the NBA

Ignorance is not bliss

 

Green is one of my favorite players, but I’m not gonna **** on a better player to prop him up. Ideally I’d like to have em both and ship Sengun’s ass outta town

 

I don't think asking questions about other players at same stage of career is propping up one over the other

Second year Brown wasn't a top twenty player, that is a fact, unless you are Bill Simmons type fanatical and he probably thought that

Brown has improved annually since being drafted, which I salute, I root for both(and all) players to reach their apex

I explained in earlier post that they could possibly have all 3 if they wait until he becomes free agent after 24' season and back up the brinks.

 

I’m talking about what he is now and he’s always been good defensively. Not every player will make the same jump as others.

 

from your own list, but focusing only in the 10 2nd picks:

only 1 all nba player: Oladipo (so, getting an Oladipo is your top 10% of expactations).
2 all star players: Ingram and D’Angelo (good players, but none of them would be the 1sr choice in a contender).
4 roleplayers.
3 busts.

sincerely, I really expect Green to become better than any of those 10, and at 20 years old he is already better than 70% of them, so we had a great pick.

 

Interestingly, #3 has been better than #2 in recent history, with Harden, Beal, Embiid, Tatum, and of course Brown himself all emerging from that pick over the same time period I mentioned. Seems more like random variation than anything else though.

My point was, there are a lot higher odds of having a star player as you get closer to #1.

 

what he is now is not what he was day / year one(or two) offensively, and defensively he had the tools (size/height) but he wasn't someone Bron feared like a young Kawhi or even Artest, he came along annually and showed why Celtics took him in the upper lotto

I never said every player will make the same jump, I said Brown wasn't who he is today on both sides of the ball his first two years, he developed into that, kudos to him

 

I like Brown's game, but my worry is that if you trade a ton of assets for a player like this, they need to be a true NBA No. 1. An elite or borderline elite-level NBA player, and I'm not quite sure Brown's there yet. By almost all advanced statistical metrics, Brown is just above average. And some (WS/48 and BPM) say he's pretty pedestrian.

Raw stats, unmeasurable defensive skill, the eye test, clutchness, etc. still account for something. Brown is still a very good NBA player, somewhere in the top 25 (anyone saying top 10 is kidding themselves). And maybe outside of Tatum's shadow he could be even better. But I kinda don't think he will. So if you're going to throw a ton of assets at him, they better hope they keep the right young guys and one of those players rises to elite status. If they don't, you spent the the last three years being historically awful to trade for a guy who's probably just going to get you to .500 every year.

 

Following your math: there are 2 kids drafted in the Top2 every year. Average NBA career is 10 years, and 2 x 10 = 20, so a kid drafted #2 becoming a Top 20 player should be the norm