3 biggest X-factors for the Boston Celtics in first-round of the postseason

Boston Celtics X-factor No. 3) Jaylen Brown

It’s not every day that you see a team’s star being listed as an X-factor but, alas, here we are.

Jaylen Brown is unequivocally the 1B option to Jayson Tatum‘s 1A, serving as the team’s close second option within their specific scheme.

His reputation as a building block and franchise cornerstone should never be in question, while his talent and production on the floor are good enough to warrant consideration for him to take part in the league’s All-Star game virtually every year.

And, yet, here we are heading into this first round series with Brown somehow a forgotten commodity when it comes to game planning.

Allow us to us explain.

This seven-game bout between Brooklyn and Boston is being highlighted by easily the two biggest matchups in the entire series: Marcus Smart going against Kyrie Irving and Jayson Tatum going up against Kevin Durant.

What we mean by this is, the two main agendas that are being discussed, at least from the C’s side of things, is Smart using his Defensive Player of the Year-worthy skill set to try and contain Irving and Tatum using his budding superstar brand of excellence to go out and match KD blow for blow.

With these two aspects going the shamrocks’ way, they’ll then find themselves having a fair shot of beating their divisional rivals in the first round.

However, should they accomplish both objectives and Jaylen Brown goes about and does his thing…? Well, then the whole role reversal theme that we were discussing in the beginning could wind up completely happening, as the Celtics would have a real chance of downing the Nets in five games or, perhaps, even fewer.

We’re talking about a guy who just averaged 23.6 points, 6.1 rebounds, 3.1 assists, and 1.1 steals on 47 percent shooting from the floor and 36 percent shooting from deep serving as arguably the third most important aspect of their potential game plan in this series.

If they can execute both of the previously mentioned objectives while also having Brown play up to his star status level, it’s hard to believe that the Boston Celtics team will find itself struggling at all in round one of the 2022 postseason.