With the new calendar year of 2023 having firmly arrived, the advent of new year’s resolutions comes with it, and in the NBA, there are plenty of examples one may find of areas individual players and teams may want to turn their attention toward improving.
For the Boston Celtics, as good as the ball club has been playing thus far this season, there are certainly a handful of areas where certain key players can up their game to make the odds of hanging the long-elusive Banner 18 go down this summer. And that was the focus of a recent article from Bleacher Report’s Zach Buckley, who singled out Jaylen Brown, Malcolm Brogdon, and Payton Pritchard as such players in his piece.
Let’s see some of what he had to say about each of the trio.
Celtics Lab 162: An early look at where Boston stands in season-long accolades races with Ethan Fuller https://t.co/9Zr8lxMjvc
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Payton Pritchard
“Pritchard is called upon to provide efficient shooting and a pinch of playmaking,” suggests the author. “He’s never looked worse in either role.”
“All three layers of his 38.6/34.0/70 shooting slash are career-lows, and this is the closest that his turnover percentage (13.8) has been to his assist percentage (15.6), per Basketball-Reference.”
Malcolm Brogdon
Buckley notes that “among the 10 Celtics who’ve logged 200-plus minutes, Brogdon has the worst net differential at minus-4.6 points per 100 possessions, per NBA.com.”
“Now, that split might most reflect the dominance of Boston’s starters, but Brogdon could shrink that gap by offering more resistance on the defensive end.”
Jaylen Brown
The B/R analyst writes that Brown is “a touch leakier than normal at the defensive end, posting the second-highest defensive rating of his career, per Basketball-Reference.”
“He’s also shooting a career-worst 33.5% from 3 (he shot 39.7% just two seasons back) and committing a career-high 3.2 turnovers. Again, these are mostly minor gripes, but there are areas he could clean up.”
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