Tatum and Brown: The Ultimate Team Players

Recently there has been anonymous player said "Tatum and Brown can’t be your superstars; they only do things that help their game. They don’t get anyone else easy shots, all they know how to do is score." First off, saying something like that anonymously is an absolute cowards move. If you are going say something like this as one of their peers, at least me man enough to put a face to it. Another thing that really upsets me about this is these guys are young, you're telling me these guys have no more room for growth at ages 22 and 24? I'm sure no one thought 22 year old Steph or 22 year old Kawhi would be the players they became. To call them selfish and saying they can't lead you to a championship is both lazy and ignorant.

    If you think that Tatum and Brown haven’t made conscious efforts to become better playmakers for others, you haven’t really watched them play. Both have easily had career highs in both assists per game and assist percentage this season. Tatum has been a very good playmaker this year, with Hayward gone and Kemba out to start the season he became the secondary playmaker. In recent games when Kemba sits a large majority of the playmaking falls on his shoulders, as well as the scoring load. A lot is being asked of Tatum while he has been dealing with the lasting effects of COVID. Jaylen was a below average passer, it was the biggest thing I had hope to see him improve upon because I knew he was going to have the ball in his hands a lot more. Like Tatum, to start the season there were many games were Jaylen was responsible for a lot of the facilitating. Even since Kemba has come back there are times on the court when the ball runs through him. He has improved on one of this most glaring weaknesses, which is very good to see.

    Now we let's look at the stats. First with Tatum, for his career he has averaged 2.5 assists per game with a 12% assist percentage. Both of those statistics have improved steadily each season he has been in the league. With no surprise to me this season has been his biggest leap of any in both categories. Tatum currently ranks 21st in Assists per game among all forwards, and 29th in assist percentage.

    Like I said before one of Jaylen's biggest weaknesses coming into this year was his playmaking, his previous career high in assists per game was 2.1. Brown currently sits at 4.0 so far this year, meaning he almost has doubled his career high. While his per game numbers didn't double, his assist percentage did. Jaylen went from an assist percentage of 9.7% last year to 20.6% this season. To put that jump into perspective this year he is 84th out of all guards in assist percentage, Wayne Ellington currently has an assist percentage of 9.7% he sits 185th out of guards. Although 84th isn't all that impressive it is a major leap from last season.

    Lastly, these two have played major roles on teams that have made two of the last three eastern conference finals. It seems pretty clear to me that their play correlates to winning in some way shape or form.