The One Big Thing

Photo Courtesy of the Boston Globe

    

    Very few teams are fortunate enough to have a duo of under 25-year-old budding stars on their roster, luckily the Celtics are one of those teams. Boston is a team who has final aspirations coming into this season, but they will need a leap from their best two players in order to make that jump. I will highlight the one big thing that I believe they will each need to achieve in order to push the Celtics over the top. 

    First we'll look at the guy who is coming off his first All-NBA selection and first All-Star game appearance, Jayson Tatum. Tatum averaged 23/7/3 on 45/40/81 shooting splits, Tatum's one big thing is improving around the basket. This is kind of two things in one, but they are similar enough to each other that I'm lumping them in together. First, he needs to improve his finishing at the rim. Out of 259 qualified players Tatum ranks 183rd on FG% from 0-3 feet, which certainly is not good. He shot a little under 62% from at the rim, if he gets to being an average finisher, which is about 66%. There is no reason Tatum, who is apparently now 6'10" long and athletic can't shoot at least average from around the rim. He is also a little below league average in percentage of shots taken around the rim, which again there is no reason a long, athletic power forward shouldn't be taking a higher rate of his shots around the basket. I would like to see improve his rate just a little bit, maybe a fewer long twos and more dunks and layups. If he goes from about 25% to 28% I think it would improve his overall shooting efficiency. I think Tatum making this attempt to improve around the rim, along with entering the all-star tier of player, will allow him to increase his trips to the line which would also benefit the team. 

    Now we have the 24-year-old All-Star hopeful Jaylen Brown. Juice is expected to probably have his role increased with the departure of Hayward and Kemba being injured to begin the season. With this rise in usage I believe we are going to need Jaylen to improve his playmaking ability. Last year Brown averaged 2.1 assists per game and had a 9.7 assist percentage, which is much lower than a wing of his caliber should be. He has slowly improved both his per game averages and percentage over his first four years in the league, but I would really like to see a major leap from him in this part of his game. The Celtics are in need of more playmakers while Kemba is out, and these first few weeks will be a great opportunity for Jaylen to improve that part of his game. 

    The Celtics have a real shot at a finals appearance, but they really need growth from their two young stars. I hope that as the season goes on we see the Jays take this next leap as basketball players. I believe they need this leap in order to have a chance to compete for a finals appearance with the top contenders in the east.