Cal’s Brown top-5 talent yet unfinished project

Jaylen Brown had a bit of a divisive season in his lone collegiate campaign at Cal.

On one hand, Brown was the best player on a NCAA Tournament No. 4 seed, averaging 14.6 points, 5.4 rebounds and two assists. Also, those counting stats look even more superb when you extend them out to per-minute pace. Brown averaged 21.2 points, 7.8 rebounds and 2.9 assists per-40 minutes, numbers that stand up extremely well, especially next to other wing prospects.

The problem is when you put those stats into an efficiency context. Brown had his moments — especially throughout the portion of Pac-12 play that guard Tyrone Wallace missed — that were superb. But they were often inconsistent due to his shooting and turnover issues. Brown was only able to muster a 51.8 true-shooting percentage, and averaged 4.5 turnovers per-40 minutes, more than any other prospect in the top 100 of my big board and second to George Mason center Shevon Thompson in the top 200 prospects.

So what do scouts make of Brown’s performance this season? Let’s take a look at it.

Strengths

First, it must be noted that Brown has absolutely prototypical size for the wing position in the NBA, with the length and athleticism to be able to move up and down the lineup from the 2 spot through the 4 spot at will. At 6-foot-7 with a 7-0.5 wingspan as measured at last year’s Hoop Summit, Brown has tremendous length on the wing to go with an 8-9 standing reach that should allow him to play big in the same way that Harrison Barnes does for the Warriors occasionally at the 4.

To go with those dimensions, Brown is an elite athlete in every sense of the word. He possesses both power — owing to a chiseled 222-pound frame — and grace with terrific explosiveness both vertically and laterally as well as solid body-control that makes him a terror in transition.

There is not a better combination of size and athleticism on the wing than Brown in this draft class, and that’s what makes him so intriguing to teams. He possesses the kind of skills that you can’t teach, and he has the potential to be the kind of versatile player on the wing that has become so highly valued in today’s NBA.

In terms of his game, where that athleticism and size bears itself out best is in terms of his aggressiveness. Brown constantly attacks — sometimes to his detriment, as mentioned above and will be discussed in-depth later. Brown led the Pac-12 in usage rate this season at 31.2. Particularly, he did an excellent job of getting to the foul line. Among players in the CBS Sports top 100, Brown finished fourth in free throw attempts per-40 minutes at 9.2. Brown attacks the rim and embraces contact, knowing that players both cannot stay in front of him and that he has the strength to finish through contact when bumped. He plays a physical brand of basketball bordering on bully-ball from time-to-time, but often it works due to his superior athletic gifts.

Despite the heavy usage rate and high turnover number, it would be unfair to call Brown selfish. When driving, Brown shown the ability to both hit the kick-out 3-point shooter as well as the diving cutter toward the rim, as he showed in this highlight reel play to Wallace.

Brown sees the court well, and has solid vision in terms of setting his teammates up for looks — especially given the Cal spacing problems. His 15.3 assist rate is a solid number for an 18-year-old wing, and shows potential for growth in terms of making plays for others.

Beyond offense, Brown possesses immense potential on the defensive end. This is where the aformentioned versatility will come into play as Brown continues to mature. It’s easy to see him moving up and down the lineup and defending a wide variety of players, both in terms of a straight up man-to-man matchup as well as in terms of switching screens. In 2015-16, Brown became a tremendous on-ball defender in terms of cutting off penetration and slowing down opposing players, something that is vital in Cuonzo Martin’s defensive scheme. He’ll occasionally get caught watching off-ball and give up a backdoor lay-up or a spot-up 3, but this isn’t uncommon among young players and only slightly detracts from his …

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