The world is full of secrets, events, and questions that can’t be answered. Do you eat or drink a Go-Gurt? That kind of thing isn’t what we’re here to talk about. My cat always comes out of nowhere 10 minutes after I think she’s lost. Where does she go? Should Jaylen Brown be on the All-Defense team?

The point of this piece is not to do that. The people who want to say that Jaylen does deserve it are the ones we are here to help. They will tell Herb Jones, OG Anunoby, and Jrue Holiday, “Not this year, boys.”

It won’t be a test of pure bias, though. There are flaws in every defence, even the best ones. We will be honest about what went well and what didn’t in Jaylen Brown’s defence this season. First, we’ll look at the facts that support Jaylen Brown’s case. After that, the video part of our show will start. Now for the fun parts.

The amounts

Stats aren’t always a good way to judge defence, but we’re going to try them anyway. If you look at JB’s defence stats, they don’t stand out. His individual defensive ranking isn’t in the top 50. According to PBP Stats, the Celtics’ defence gives up about 3.5 points per 100 plays more when Jaylen is on the court. He also has 1.7 stocks (steals and blocks) per game, which is good but not great.

The on/off difference is the most telling of those numbers. When you play, it’s never a good sign if your team gets worse on either side of the ball. But the situation is important. Around the middle of the first and third quarters, Mazzulla will often take Tatum and one of our best defensive guards off the court in favour of a group of bench players, most often Hauser and Horford. Even though Al is still great, that’s a defence drop, to put it lightly. When Brown plays against starts, he often does so without his star player, which hurts the defence. In other words, the difference hurts Brown’s chances of being elected, but it’s not the death threat it seems to be at first.

It’s like when my kid tries to “drink” Greek yoghurt without a spoon. The advanced measures are all over the place. The Defensive LEBRON score for BBall Index puts him in the middle of the pack, and DARKO’s Defensive Daily Plus Minus has shown that he’s been a bad defender all season. To put it another way, his defensive estimated plus-minus for Dunks and Threes is -89. What does that tell us? There’s not much there at first, but things get interesting (at least I hope so, and I’m sure you do too).

Some people have great things to say about JB, like that one ex-coworker I always use as a reference. He’s ranked 24th among qualified players in defensive win shares. The number of wins you’ve gained is equal to your defensive box score effect. Pretty good, and Jaylen’s case shines when you look at play-type statistics.

He’s in the top half of defenders for pick-and-roll ballhandlers and spot-ups, but he’s not great at stopping those types of plays. The numbers show that this player is very good at defending three very important plays and not too bad at defending anyone else.

Another thing to note is that Jaylen is a good defence rebounder for his position. He gets 4.4 rebounds per game and 11.7% of defensive rebounds, which ranks him 45th out of 174 qualifying guards and centres (as ranked by NBA.com’s strange spots, which includes guys like Scottie Barnes). What you did is good, well above average, but not great. He also doesn’t change how the Celtics defend or recover as a team.

Defense-wise, JB’s numbers aren’t out of this world, but that’s true for almost every non-big in the NBA. Even players with great names have data black eyes, which could be the worst kind of black eyes ever. The numbers don’t make it less likely that Jaylen should be on the All-Defense team, which means we can move on to step 2.