When the Boston Celtics gave Jaylen Brown the richest NBA contract ever with a five-year, $304 million extension, they implicitly asserted that Brown’s game and career trajectory will place him among the elite players in basketball.
Brown reaching that stratosphere is a two-pronged mission. It requires the 26-year-old to commit to ironing out the issues and inconsistencies that have dotted his rise to stardom so far. But it’s also on the Celtics coaching staff and organization to put their franchise cornerstone in the best positions for him to succeed.
Brown is now a supermax player coming off an All-NBA season — and a brutal playoff run that helped lead Boston to an underwhelming Eastern Conference Finals exit.