Jaylen Brown took on an important responsibility this season, eager to grow into his team's vocal leader in his fifth season in the NBA.
But the Boston Celtics have struggled mightily throughout their 2020-21 campaign, seeming to perpetually hover around a .500 record, which they fell one game below after a Friday night loss to the Sacramento Kings.
It was the third game they dropped in a row, and aside from a third-quarter comeback, the Celtics didn't show much connectivity on offense. The uninspired performance has left many unconvinced that Boston is capable of a deep playoff run save for a move at the deadline, and Brown was asked about that ceiling.
Unsurprisingly, he deflected from saying whether or not his team is good enough, and spun the question around on himself.
"My job is to just come out and play basketball and inspire guys to play hard and compete to win I haven't done a good job with that," Brown told reporters Friday. "And that's something that has been a challenge. Now for me, I accept that challenge, I've accepted that challenge at the beginning of the year, so ultimately, I've got to do a better job of, you know, being a leader."
That's a nice thing to say, sure, but obviously the Celtics problems don't really fall on Brown's shoulders -- which must be quite sore from carrying the team through a majority of the year.
Brown is the type who says all the right things, though. But in a thoughtful way that doesn't seem like a bunch of corporate lines. He feels that he may need to switch up his strategy leading the team, though.
"My mom always told me to keep an open mind. There's different ways to lead, so maybe the way that I've been trying to hasn't been working," Brown said. "So you know, try other ways to be a leader, and be a better leader, and learn and grow, and make adjustments and things like that. But that's something that I've always tried to work on and improve on. And I haven't done a good job leading this group, I lose sleep at night because of that."
The Celtics record is probably keeping many members of the team up at night, especially given their window to turn things around is going to close.
