As NBA honors go, Player of the Month is fairly Mickey Mouse. Being named either conference's best player over any given 12-game stretch is straightforwardly impressive, though not enough to get anyone outside of the online paramilitary wing of any team's fanbase to care about it much one way or the other. That is, unless you are Jaylen Brown.
The Boston wing missed out on December's Eastern Conference Player of the Month honor, passed over in favor of another Jalen—Brunson, that is, of the New York Knicks—prompting Brown to request the assignment of guarding the red-hot Kawhi Leonard when his Celtics faced Leonard's Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night. "Why wouldn’t I?" Brown said after the game. "I seek those challenges. I feel like it brings the most out of me." That feeling now looks totally correct. Brown and the Celtics annihilated the (also red-hot!) Clippers for their seventh win in eight, and Brown equalled his career high with 50 points while dominating the matchup with Leonard.
All season long, the Celtics have outperformed a preseason consensus that pegged them at around .500 in a campaign they'd face without the injured Jayson Tatum. That projection was not so much an affirmative statement of mediocrity—even minus Tatum, the Celtics still had Brown, Derrick White, and a cadre of established players on the court, plus the sport's most locked-in menace on the bench in head coach Joe Mazzulla—as it was an admission of uncertainty, as Boston had just lost its best player to an Achilles tear, then traded away two core veteran starters from the title-winning 2023–24 team. The Indiana Pacers underwent similar offseason upheavals, and as a result are pretty clearly taking a gap year, so why not Boston too?
The operative factor is that Jaylen Brown is too good. For years, Brown has toiled as Tatum's second-in-command, a role that makes sense in a certain context—Tatum is the better all-around player—but which Brown is occasionally overqualified for and which he has frequently outplayed. This year marks the first time Brown has ever gotten to be the best player on an NBA team, and he is excelling.
Brown's always been a good scorer, though it would have been fair to wonder how his production would hold up given more ball-handling responsibility and against better defenders. Up against that new wave of pressure, Brown has put together easily the best scoring season of his career, in terms of both volume (36.4 percent usage) and efficiency (60.2 true shooting percentage). Brown's defense has also been tremendous, to the point that now, when he says something like "I believe I'm the best two-way player in the world," it doesn't scan as ridiculous. (At absolute worst, he's top-three; he's a better defender than either Cade Cunningham or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and is having a better season than Anthony Edwards.)
Brown is getting to the line more than ever in his career, which is essential for a team that always plays five-out and takes a million threes, thereby all but totally eschewing free throws. He is outshooting the league average from every zone on the court, most notably nailing 56.6 percent of his long twos, which are the sorts of shots reserved for the best players in the game. Brown looks comfortable taking those because he has a physical advantage over almost anyone charged with guarding him (double-teaming him is prohibitively risky, due to Boston's aforementioned three-point volume), and he plays with assuredness, knowing that shot is open whenever he wants it.
With Brown playing so well, all the roster questions that wound up wrong-footing the prognosticators are not as serious. Boston's big-man rotation leaves much to be desired, yet both Neemias Queta and Luka Garza are playing career-best ball with the most responsibility they've ever had. In a league once again populated with big, nasty power forwards, the Sam Hauser–Jordan Walsh–Josh Minott rotation is anachronistically small, but makes up for it with ludicrous shooting. Brown has taken a leap as a playmaker, and both Derrick White and Payton Pritchard have joined him in stepping up their offensive games, making up for Tatum's absence and Anfernee Simons's shakiness. None of this works without Brown's willingness to take and make the hardest shots in the game, and while one might fairly harbor skepticism about Brown continuing to shoot so well in the midrange, there's nothing remotely fictitious about his numbers.
The thing that reassures me is Brown's physicality. Last week, he was matched up against the Sacramento Kings' Keon Ellis, a wing defender who regularly rates among the most disruptive in the league. Ellis always knows where to stand, which passing lanes to dive into, and what will bother specific ball-handlers. Brown sought out the matchup, even going out of his way to get him on switches, because Ellis is tiny and Brown is huge, and he spent the game pounding through Ellis right to the rim. There aren't many wing defenders who can truly knock Brown off his spots, and while his handle hasn't improved to Tatum's level, he's still a dangerous enough driver and shooter that you have to play him straight-up.
The question now is how much this will all matter. On the one hand, Boston's center rotation seems like it could become a real liability against the East's elite. The Celtics are wobbly on the boards, and the Pistons and Magic might beat the crap out of them; I love Queta, but Detroit's Jalen Duren would regard him as a meal. On the other hand, the "East's elite" are only elite in the relative sense. Everyone is pretty flawed, with the Knicks resisting the chance to take control of the conference at every turn, Cleveland regressing hard, Detroit having exactly one good offensive player, and Orlando mired in never-ending Paolo Banchero uncertainty. The Celtics' reliance on three-pointers gives them a volatility that should scare any potential playoff opponent, no matter how much more talented, at least as much as it scares their own fans.
Boston currently sits third in the East, a mere half-game behind New York. I am contractually obligated to mention the latest phase of Jayson Tatum's career-long Kobe Bryant tribute, currently taking the form of his quest to recover from the Achilles tear in less than a year. A full-bore Tatum would make the Celtics real contenders, but even if Tatum defies modern medicine in the name of his idol, he won't be at full strength this season. Thanks to Brown, Boston might not even need its best player in order to contend for a Finals appearance, which is, if nothing else, extremely impressive.
