After an All-NBA season, Jaylen Brown is having the best season of his career and proving to be more mature than many had thought.
Jaylen Brown continually comes back a stronger player at the beginning of each season, whether it is from perfecting his craft during a shortened summer as the NBA navigated a worldwide epidemic to the encore he’s giving after winning a position on the 2022 All-NBA Second Team.
And even though the three-time All-Star’s pursuit of his best self could have been put out by signing the most lucrative contract in league history over the summer, he has responded by setting a challenge for himself to take on more responsibility and gain even more trust from his teammates and coaching staff.
Jaylen Brown speaks about his growth as a player
When talking about his development as a facilitator early in the season, Brown said:
“I think at the start of the year, I don’t think the coaching staff was looking at me to be more of a playmaker, but any time I get an opportunity and I get better, That’s why I wanted to prove and earn everybody’s trust and respect,”
“I really worked in the offseason on developing my crafts. Well, (I) take my game serious, and keep coming back, (and) getting better every year. I’m gonna just keep doing that.”
During the current campaign, the six-foot-six forward has been able to lock in more consistently on defense, unleash his athletic capabilities to tease even the league’s greatest scorers, and tap into his drive to maximize his abilities—a seemingly limitless reservoir of energy.
He shut down Stephen Curry during the Boston Celtics‘ 52-point rout of the Golden State Warriors, as an excellent example. After finishing with four points on 2/13 shooting, the two-time league MVP shot 0/9 from beyond the arc.
Although Brown would have needed to advocate for this assignment in the past, he told Inside The Celtics that after playing tight defense that prevented Curry from finding his rhythm:
“Maybe earlier in the year, I would have had to ask for it, but now it’s kind of like normalized.
“The coaching staff assigned me to Steph; they wanted me to pick him up, make it hard for him, try to create some turnovers, and that’s what I did.”
