Do the Celtics need to run more offense through Jaylen Brown?

Spoiler alert: there’s strong evidence to suggest it.

Do the Boston Celtics need to run more plays for star forward Jaylen Brown? Boston.com’s Tom Westerholm raises the question in a recent article that notes that getting the Cal-Berkeley product more touches could pay dividends.

Per Westerholm, the Celtics have played the Georgia native as a high-usage option in both of Boston’s first two contests of the 2020-21 NBA season — to the tune of 28.4% and 40.8% usage rates vs. the Milwaukee Bucks and Brooklyn Nets respectively. Those usage rates — which note how much a player is the focal point of a play — suggest that the 33- and 27-point performances of Brown’s in the first two games of the season are connected.

It doesn’t take a basketball genius to realize that more touches equal more opportunities to score, and no other Celtic has been more reliable in that regard from tip to buzzer in the start to the season so far.

To underscore his point, Westerholm notes that Brown’s usage rate was just 20% in the 108 – 107 loss to the Indiana Pacers on Sunday night.

In that game, the Celtic forward scored a comparatively meager 16 points and 4 assists, looking as great as ever when he was attacking with the ball as he had in the first two contests.

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Coincidence? Probably not — but it’s worth keeping in mind that team president Danny Ainge made it clear ahead of the season that the team would be doing a fair amount of tire-kicking on its roster to see what it has, and it’s possible this could be a brief example of that.

But whether it was an intentional shift to feature other players or just the start of something really good that somehow managed to miss the eyes of the coaching staff, the kind of play we’ve been seeing from brown when an engaged, high-usage player is simply too good to pass up.

Particularly given everything else going on with the team.

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