Boston Celtics: Jayson Tatum, Kyrie Irving and the great “Kobe Brain” lie — a deeper look

Jayson Tatum has been one of the Boston Celtics’ most reliable scorers thus far, and many attribute his turnaround to De-Kobe Braining. But is “Kobe Brain” even real?

Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics have been excellent thus far into the 2019-20 campaign. Outside of his aberrant 1 for 18 shooting performance in a win against the Dallas Mavericks, Tatum has been the team’s most reliable wing scorer.

In addition to the great leaps the 21-year-old has taken defensively, Tatum seems to be growing more and more comfortable in his role as a primary wing scorer. He has shown both patience and consistency, and is showing savvy years beyond his age.

This success comes on the heels of a rather disappointing 2018-2019 sophomore campaign, where he struggled to find his role and consistency as a scorer in a tumultuous season for the team. Many attribute Tatum’s sophomore slump to his shot selection. Many, including myself, speculated that he had come down with a nasty case of “Kobe Brain.”

Kobe Brain is a shot selection phenomenon where players all of the sudden start taking a ton of mid-range jumpers. The condition is named after Kobe Bryant, auteur filmmaker and Los Angeles Lakers legend. Bryant was one of the greatest isolation scorers in basketball history, and he had a particular penchant for that mid-range jumper. Over the course of his 16 year NBA career, about 28% of all his shots were of the long two variety.

Many traced the outbreak of Kobe Brain back to 2018, Tatum’s rookie reason. Tatum had a fantastic rookie campaign as the Boston Celtics cruised all the way to the Eastern Conference’s second seed and were set up for a deep playoff run. However, after injuries to Gordon Hayward in Game one of the regular season and Kyrie Irving missing the entirety of that year’s playoffs, those expectations were called into question and much of the scoring burden fell to Tatum and, then, second year player Jaylen Brown.

Still, he flourished in his role, averaging 18 points per game as Boston improbably rolled to the Eastern Conference Finals. No matter how the playoffs played out (Celtics eventually took the LeBron James-led Cavaliers to seven games) Tatum had solidified himself as a cornerstone upon which Danny Ainge would build the next Boston Celtics dynasty.

Then, on May 18th, 2018, an episode of Detail aired on ESPN. Detail is a short documentary series where Kobe Bryant breaks down some game film and offers his perspective on what went right and wrong. That particular episode was about Jayson Tatum.

It is at that moment that we can trace when Tatum, then an impressionable 20-year-old, might have come down with Kobe Brain. Tatum admitted on the Bill Simmons Podcast to watching the 18 minute segment “around 70 times”.

He was infected… or so we thought.

I had always been a little bit skeptical about Kobe Brain. Even though I am sworn to hate the Lakers, I still really liked Kobe. He is the Patrick Bateman of the NBA; a basketball sociopath bent on perfection. Perhaps my favorite Kobe Bryant moment of them all was when he insisted he had perfected a one-legged fadeaway jumper after watching video of a cheetah hunting, where the creature used its tail as a stabilizer. Equal parts incredible and psychotic.

In any case, the theory of Kobe Brain spawned out of the idea that Kobe would be unable to thrive in the modern NBA, with it’s hyper-efficient, math-based approach the devalues the mid-range jumper. Yet there are still plenty of modern NBA players having productive careers with Kobe-esque shot selection profiles.

Kawhii Leonard immediately comes to mind, and the stats back it up. Prior to even being drafted by the Boston Celtics, Tatum showed signs of Kobe Brain while with the Duke Blue Devils. Did he truly come down with it? Is Kobe Brain even real?

It warranted further investigation.

Last season 16.9% of Tatum’s shots came from between 16 to 28 feet, the dreaded “long two.” In his stellar rookie campaign, he still took a lot of long twos, accounting for about 18.8% of his shots, however the sheer amount of shots he took from three (29.0%) and at the rim (32.0%) were enough to offset them from an efficiency standpoint.

Simply put, he was such a fantastic three point shooter and was hitting shots inside 10 feet, it didn’t really matter that he was taking so many of these shots. He was still producing despite hamstringing himself from an efficiency standpoint.

This season his shot profile has followed a similar pattern as his rookie year, with 29.3% coming at or near the rim and a career-high 33.7% coming from beyond the arc. Although the sample size is too small to really glean any insight as far as efficiency goes — not to mention his 1 for 18 performance really skewing the data — it’s clear his shot selection has changed dramatically.

The glaring difference is that he has virtually eliminated the long two from his shot selection, now accounting for only 9.8% of his shot selection. In other words, he’s getting back to what made him such a dangerous offensive threat in his rookie season; attacking the rim and hitting three pointers.

So what has changed? Was he cured of Kobe Brain? Or was there something else?

The most obvious difference between this season and last is the departure of Kyrie Irving, who unlike Kemba Walker, is an extremely isolation-heavy ballhandler. Rather than swinging the ball around and probing defenses, Irving basically just dribbled the air out of the ball until it was time to shoot. Irving had a 28.6% usage rate last season, far above that of Tatum and Brown, who had a 21.8% and 21.5% rate, respectively.

To his credit, it is arguable Irving is the most gifted ball handler the NBA has ever seen and is a historically great shooter. He can basically get to any spot on the court at his pleasure. Offenses should revolve around their best players, and Kyrie was their clear-cut best offensive player last season.

But this isolation-heavy style also had an effect on his teammates shot selection. Perhaps this is the genesis of Kobe Brain? Dare I say, Kyrie Brain?

Looking at the stats, you would think Kobe Brain affected Jaylen Brown as well. In addition to Tatum, Brown also experienced a similar jump in long-twos last year, increasing from 5.5% in 2017-2018 to 11.9% in 2018-2019.

Too many times last season it felt as though Tatum and Brown were getting the ball either in frantic end-of-clock situations when Irving was doubled or hedged on a pick-and-roll, or they were just tossed into mid/low post isolation situations out of pittance.

Gordon Hayward was a victim as well. A whopping 36% of his attempts were from three last season, by far the highest rate of his career. And yes, Hayward spent much of last season getting his sea legs back after his leg injury. But his strengths have always been getting into the paint and making plays with his deft touch around the rim and pinpoint swing passes to corner and wing shooters.

Thus far this season the Boston Celtics’ offensive attack has been a more egalitarian approach. Walker is clocking in at about 28% usage rate, however Tatum (25.8%), Brown (23%), and Hayward (22.3%) are also sharing the scoring and playmaking burden. This has had a positive effect on the efficiency and shot selection of all players involved.

Brown is playing to his strengths, attaching the rim at a career high rate. Hayward, instead of settling for catch and shoot threes like last year, is operating like a surgeon inside 10 feet. And Tatum’s shot selection profile is looking more like an efficient modern day scorer (a la Paul George) rather than the anachronistic Kobe Bryant.

So maybe we had the wrong idea about Kobe Brain all along. Perhaps it is more of a systemic infection, something affecting the entire host organism, rather than one discrete part like the brain.

An infection linked not to the particular shooting inclinations of one player, but symptoms of a larger systemic issue. When a team, for whatever reason — whether philosophical or tactical or otherwise — suddenly shifts to an isolation-heavy approach.

To be clear, this isn’t necessarily indicative of team success, or lack thereof. Plenty of teams win with isolation-heavy approaches, and about as many lose with similar approaches.

Contrast being the Houston Rockets with James Harden and the Phoenix Suns and Devin Booker. Both players have similar usage rates, however, only one of those teams have won more than 30 games in the past three seasons.

Rather, this effect is more felt on the shot selection of players around them. Philosophically this checks out; when you structure your offensive attack around your best player, other players have to make sacrifices to their own games to fit in.

And that isn’t always easy. It takes it’s toll on chemistry. When comparing the Boston Celtics in 2017-2018 and the Boston Celtics in 2018-2019 you will find very similar usage rates, yet their outcomes were wildly different.

Look, maybe it’s not necessarily all bad. Michael Jordan, perhaps patient zero of Kobe Brain, is the greatest basketball player of all time. Like the body fighting off illness with a fever, sometimes Kobe Brain is necessary to ensure survival, to ensure the organism prospers, to win.

After all, Kobe Bryant did win five championships.