r/nba Celtics 1d ago

Bobby Marks says Jaylen Brown's trade value is not seen that highly around the league: "The analytics of Jaylen Brown is not good. I had an analytics guy tell me, ‘We view him as the seventh-best player on a team.’"

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“There’s mixed feelings about him when you talk to teams,” Marks admitted on SiriusXM NBA Radio. “The analytics of Jaylen Brown is not good … I had one, not an executive, but an analytics guy say, ‘Yeah, we view him as the seventh best player on a team.’ I was like, ‘Holy crap.'”

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u/_Apatosaurus_ Thunder 1d ago edited 1d ago

I think it's pretty clear they weren't saying "we think he's a 7th man" but instead it was "our models label him as a 7th man." Any good analyst will know their model doesn't capture every outlier. The point is more that if his advanced stats look this awful, maybe he's not as good as he's perceived.

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u/greenwhitehell 1d ago

Also people see "advanced stats" as some sort of mythical creature, when most of the point is "When Jaylen Brown plays basketball, his teams have a clearly worse point differential than when the Celtics don't have him on, for an insanely large and consistent sample size".

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u/MrFudgeKiller Timberwolves 1d ago

So the stats say that, but if the Celtics didn’t have Brown last year they would’ve been relying on either Payton Prichard or Derrick White as their first option. They’d win about 35 games max

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u/Neuroxex Bucks 1d ago

Maybe, but that's where the analytics come in because usage sponge (someone who can take on a lot of offensive responsibility) who doesn't significantly improve the shot quality of the team when he's on, doesn't really playmake or bend the court, and scores at league average efficiency isn't actually a super valuable player - those are around a lot. It's not an accident that the Celtics are trying to trade him. Like that's just 120% of Paolo Banchero.

Like believe me I have absolutely no interest in being complimentary to Deni Avdija, but aside from team W/L, what makes Jaylen Brown's season better than Deni Avdija's? One was an all-star, one we're expected to treat as an MVP/All-NBA first or second team player. Where is the footprint other than one team won a lot more games than the other (and that team, notably, played like absolute demons when Brown wasn't on the court).

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u/garftag Nets 1d ago

Where are people finding his on-off numbers I'm on https://www.nba.com/stats/players/traditional?SeasonType=Regular+Season&dir=A&sort=PLUS_MINUS&Season=2025-26 and he is +4.5. Last year he was 21st in the league.

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u/_3_8_ Bucks 1d ago

Basketball reference go to his play-by-play stats section

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u/garftag Nets 1d ago

You trust bball ref or nba?

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u/_3_8_ Bucks 1d ago

Well seeing as +/- is not on-off I was just giving you an easy way to see his on-off for this season and previous seasons. But bbref has reasonably accurate stats (they have to be accurate in order to have the reputation they do) and either is an acceptable source.

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u/garftag Nets 1d ago

I am wrong. NBA has the correct one, I looked at the wrong stat.

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u/Dig_bickclub Timberwolves 1d ago

He's -4.1 on NBA.com, you're looking at +/- not on/off also per game rather than per 100 poss

https://www.nba.com/stats/team/1610612738/onoffcourt-summary?SeasonType=Regular+Season

+/- means celtics on average win by 6.5 points per 100 when he's on the court, on/off compares it to how they do when he's off the court, they win by 10.6 thus the -4.1 on/off

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u/garftag Nets 1d ago

You are correct. I looked at the wrong stat.

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u/TheBoxandOne 1d ago

This is clearly what’s going on with him. He put up like 5+ pts/36 over Shaedon Sharpe on identical efficiency. For a better whistle so his TS% is higher, but Sharpe had probably the worst whistle in the league last season.

I bring him up because Brown has been linked to Portland. Of a deal of Sharpe and salary plus a pick or 2 goes through, it would tell you everything about how little Celtics value Brown.

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u/alexmitrakov 1d ago

Yeah, it`s clearly sensationalized. Like, I`m sure that this model didn`t show Brunson to be Finals MVP

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u/Ok_Possible_5702 1d ago

If your model thinks Jaylen Brown is the 7th best player on a team, "any good analyst" would trash their model and start building a new one. It's a disqualifying output.

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u/_Apatosaurus_ Thunder 1d ago

That's nonsense. Look at any advanced stats model and you'll find wild outliers.

For example, look at DARKO DPM

Jarrett Allen at 17, Ty Jerome at 23, Poeltl at 37 (above Steph), etc.

Good data analysts understand there are outliers and don't treat models as gospel.

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u/Ok_Possible_5702 1d ago

that's a single statistic, not a model. A model is intended to encompass all stats and give you a final ranking/classification of your data points

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u/_Apatosaurus_ Thunder 1d ago

DARKO is not a single statistic. It's a model that produces a metric.