Boston Celtics: Breaking down what Jaylen Brown’s injury means for Cs

The breakout season for Boston Celtics wing, Jaylen Brown, is coming to an abrupt end

Boston Celtics All-Star forward, Jaylen Brown, was questionable for Sunday’s game against the Miami Heat. Now, a couple of days removed, it is reported that the 24-year-old is going to miss the rest of the 2020-21 NBA season, playoffs included.

The Boston Celtics themselves broke the news with this tweet:

Jaylen had been dealing with left knee tendonitis all year long, which had sidelined him from game to game. However, this injury was totally out of left field.

It feels like Brown hadn’t been able to catch a break for the last two weeks or so, missing five out of the Cs last 12 games. His knee was bothering him, especially after that scary injury where both Brown and Tatum had to go to the locker room in clutch time.

It was quite a surprise to see the wing reported as being done for the season with a wrist injury.

He was rehabbing the knee tendonitis as well as missing games due to a suffered ankle sprain versus Portland, and now a severe wrist injury.

A torn scapholunate ligament is the exact same injury Romeo Langford suffered during last year’s playoff run.

That was around mid-September, and Langford did not debut this season until April 4th. That is roughly 170-180 days of recovery or five-and-a-half to six months. That would put Brown’s timetable for a return around early November, or a few weeks into the 2021-22 NBA season.

This is obviously a massive blow to the team, both roster as well as charisma.

Going into the playoffs, knowing you won’t have one of your All-Star/ near All-NBA level players is detrimental to team energy. As disappointing as this season has been, it just got significantly worse, and I’m sure the players feel the same way.

Jaylen Brown was having a career year, as he made his first All-Star game and posted a career-high in nearly every statistical category.

He averaged a career-high in points (24.7), assists (3.4), steals (1.2), field goal percentage (48.4%), and 3-point percentage, at 39.7%. This was all on career-high volume and workload, and he handled it better than any of us could have imagined.

He was an easy pencil-in for the All-Star game this year after he was snubbed last year.

He proved the doubters wrong, and in excellent fashion. He was one of the league’s best mid-range shooters who turned into an extremely high volume 3-point shooter and was finishing at a near-career-best 70%.

Another thing the Boston Celtics forward had improved on was his off-the-dribble scoring.

In his four prior years, he had 54% of his two-pointers assisted, and 94% of his three-pointers assisted, but this year those numbers are 45% and 78%, respectively. Even though it was his least-assisted season, it was by far his most efficient one with a career-best 58.6% true shooting.

It was just an absurdly good season for the young stud, and it is quite sad it had to end the way it did, with him hurting in other areas as well as Boston being in the play-in tournament.

The Boston Celtics are going to need Jayson Tatum to play like an MVP

Jayson Tatum has largely been the only constant on this injury-riddled Boston Celtics team.

He has been their best player and has been undeniably the biggest difference-maker. He leads the Celtics in points per game, on-off rating per 100 possessions, minutes played –lead the way by nearly 200–, free-throws attempted –lead by 80–, and games started.

All of this is even including his horrid stretch, between when he got COVID-19 and the All-Star break, in which he averaged 24 points a game on 52% true shooting, well below league average.

In the games prior to COVID, and now post-All-Star break, he has averaged an insane 28.3 points a night on 48% shooting from the field, and 42% shooting from deep.

Now, to be quite honest, 28 a night isn’t going to cut it moving forward. As of right now, we are destined for a play-in spot, even something the Jaylen-less Cs should be able to come out on top of.

However, as the seventh seed, the opponent is looking like either one of the Milwaukee Bucks or Brooklyn Nets should they advance. If we want to even try to make the series competitive, we will need LeBron-level dominance from Tatum.

We will see the true mindset of Tatum — does he believe the season is a wash?

Or is he going to give it his all, demand the ball each play, and will this team to as many wins as possible.

While we need Tatum to play at this MVP status, we are going to need contributions from others.

Kemba Walker will need to revert to All-Star form, Marcus Smart needs to learn his role, Evan Fournier needs to continue this hot streak, and the bench needs to really shape up.

Payton Pritchard has been solid all year, and we will likely be seeing plenty of minutes from him, but Aaron Nesmith is who I want to see the most out of.

Nesmith has averaged 12 points and five rebounds on an absurd 79% true shooting — 22% above league average — over these past six games in just 22 minutes a night.

He has been giving Marcus Smart-esque hustle but is also hitting shots in key moments. He has been the perfect blend of that rookie fighting for minutes with his mentality, while also giving solid contributions on the stat-sheet.

The Boston Celtics are going to need effort from a lot of people, starting from all the way at the top to all the way down to the bottom if they want to make any noise.

While it is unlikely that we do make any, we can all hope.