Allow Me To Explain Why Jaylen Brown Working Out With Melo Can Actually Be A Good Thing
When it comes to the Celtics young talent and summer workouts, it’s a sensitive subject. Why? Well we have to start with the elephant in the room
when Kobe went out of his way to work with Jayson Tatum last summer and then Tatum immediately had the worst isolation season of any player in the league. I’m not kidding, his points per iso possession were dead fucking last. Brutal isolation season from him and it was clear his mind was poisoned with Black Mamba venom into only taking terrible long twos for a large majority of the early part of this past season. But let me be clear here, this Jaylen/Melo workout is NOT a Kobe situation. Kobe had bad intentions, to ruin his rival from the inside by fucking up their prized jewel. Melo isn’t a rival by any means and naturally the responses to that tweet from fellow Celtics fans were what you imagined
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But here’s the thing, this is not a negative. I feel like people saw this picture and their idea of Melo is 2017-19 Melo who was absolutely terrible. Don’t forget this is a man with 25,551 points good for 22nd all time. Maybe because it’s been so long since prime Melo but let’s not forget that this man was one of the most unstoppable one on one scorers in this era. Melo is a HOF player and a ridiculous offensive talent, sure he has his defensive issues but you don’t think that workout was to go over defensive drills do you? I have no problem with Jaylen improving his offensive arsenal from a guy that did this
Let’s just start with Melo’s bread and butter in isolation offense. The one thing Jaylen needs to continue to improve on is being able to create his own shot. Part of that is improving his handles, but the other part is developing an actual isolation game in the first place. In 74 games last year Jaylen scored just 0.59 points per iso possession and shot 30.4%. He needs help in that area and if there’s one thing Melo knows how to do it’s score in isolation. It’s one part of Jaylen’s game that we haven’t really seen through his three seasons that is going to be important moving forward especially if Kyrie leaves. This team needs as many guys that can create for themselves as possible.
Then you move to post up offense. This is an area that the Celts didn’t run a whole lot for Jaylen but when they did he was decent, at 0.86 points and 50.9% shooting. In his prime you get Melo on the block and he’s going to school you basically every time. We already know Jaylen loves that little turnaround but anything he can learn from Melo here is a bonus as well.
I can understand the initial reaction of thinking this is a bad move and that only bad things can come of it, but that’s because you’re thinking of Melo as a washed up player and not the lethal offensive scorer he was in his career. We saw the improvement Jaylen made after working out with TMac last summer, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s mentally strong enough to avoid all of Melo’s bad habits and only take away the parts that will make him better.
Feel better? Maybe you’re a visual learner like me, so if that didn’t help calm you down perhaps this will