Buckle Up: How Jaylen Brown Thrived Defending NBA Stars originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
In Game 1 of the 2024 NBA Finals, Jaylen Brown took Luka Doncic’s pocket in the backcourt and completed a dunk. To celebrate, he imitated fastening a seat belta move he has repeated several times this season.
Fueled by snubbing of All-Defense and All-NBA last season, Brown took out his frustrations on the Pacers and Mavericks, earn MVP honors in the Eastern Conference and NBA Finals as Boston fought its way to Banner 18.
Brown continues to face the challenge of consistently defending the opposing team’s best players to begin the 2024-25 campaign.
With Cade Cunningham and the Detroit Pistons returning to town Thursday night… another early season tilt added after Boston failed to advance in the NBA Cup, we wondered what Brown’s individual defensive metrics would look like through the first 24 games of the new season.
After all, Cunningham has been one of Brown’s most frequent assignments this season, with Brown limiting Detroit’s star guard to seven points on 3-of-9 shooting in the first two games of the season. Cunningham generated 48 points on 20-of-39 shooting against every other Boston defender this season, according to NBA tracking numbers.
For the season, Brown is holding his opponents to shooting 2.5 percent below expected output. That not only matches his marks from last season, but also second-best among Celtics regulars, with only Derrick White (3.2 percent below expectations) ahead of him.
But it’s the level of opponent Brown is defending that makes his mark even more impressive. It was White who noted during the 2024 playoffs that Brown deserved an All-Defense nod because of who he aspires to defend.
“(Brown) was unreal last season, taking on that challenge,” White said. “Whenever there was a big name or a big player, he wanted to take on the challenge.”
This season appears to be no different. Brown’s top 10 most common matchups continue to read like an All-Star ballot. Here’s a look at Brown’s top 10 most frequent faceoffs this season based on total possessions defended, according to NBA tracking:
!function(){“use strict”;window.addEventListener(“message”,(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data(“datawrapper-height”)){var e=document.querySelectorAll( “iframe”);for(var t in a.data(“datawrapper-height”))for(var r=0;r
