Boston Celtics: Jaylen Brown for Most Improved Player of the Year

In his second season in the NBA, Jaylen Brown has improved greatly from his rookie year. With an increase in minutes and a bigger role, he’s showing us why he deserves to win the NBA’s Most Improved Player of the Year Award.

Last season was a bit of a disappointment for every rookie. Even the No. 1 pick, Ben Simmons, was out for the entire year from an injury. The third pick in the 2016 NBA draft was Jaylen Brown, an athletic forward out of the University of California.

The following chart compares this season to his rookie year.

As you can see, he’s nearly improved in every category except field goal percentage, 2-point percentage, free throw percentage and turnovers.

However, a major reason for these results is the increase in minutes. The Boston Celtics have played in 16 games thus far, and Brown has almost matched his games started total.

Per Game Table
Season	Age	GS	MP	FG	FGA	FG%	3P	3PA	3P%	2P	2PA	2P%	FT	FTA	FT%	TRB	AST	STL	BLK	TOV	PTS
2016-17	20	20	17.2	2.5	5.4	.454	0.6	1.7	.341	1.9	3.7	.507	1.1	1.6	.685	2.8	0.8	0.4	0.2	0.9	6.6
2017-18	21	16	32.1	5.4	12.3	.437	1.8	4.7	.373	3.6	7.6	.475	2.6	4.1	.636	6.8	1.1	1.2	0.3	1.5	15.1

Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 11/18/2017.

It helps that the team traded away both starters in Avery Bradley and Jae Crowder.

This opened the door for an increase in minutes for Brown, and an opportunity for rookie forward Jayson Tatum. At the time it seemed a little odd that they would want to get rid of Crowder, Bradley and Isaiah Thomas – especially because they did hold the No. 1 seed in the East. We all know how the playoffs went, but you’d like to think the Celtics were just hit with bad luck.

Brown has nearly doubled his minutes this season, and in that extra time, he has almost increased his point total by 10 points. He is not shy in shooting the ball this year, attempting 4.7 3-pointers and 12.3 field goal attempts per game. It would be one thing to not execute when shooting it a lot more, but he has been able to get the ball in the basket. His field goal percentage may have dipped, but that is also because he is attempting 6.9 more shots per game than last year

Brown’s athleticsm and strength has given him the edge in going to the line a lot more this season. While his free throw percentage needs some work (63.6 percent), it’s still a nice sign to see him get to the line.

Arguably one of his best qualities this season has been his defense. A major reason to why he was so heavily favored by the Celtics organization was because of his defense that was on display for the Golden Bears in college. This season he has shown an edge against a lot of All-Stars on the defensive side of things.

Jaylen Brown aka @FCHWPO is guarding some league's best players and he's been doing damn fine job. LBJ, PG13, Melo, Russ, DeRozan and KD have shoot 31.8 FG% against him. Watch how he does that: https://t.co/0osWU85HVP
— Tomek Kordylewski (@Timi_093) November 18, 2017

Those are some impressive stats against some of the greatest offensive players in the league. Brown has shown us why he deserves to win the Most Improved Player of the Year award.

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Through his increase in offensive production and his defense, he should definitely be in the conversation by the end of the season.

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