Jaylen Brown takes shot at ‘flopping’ MVPs

Jaylen Brown has been enjoying near an MVP stage this yr, as he has taken over as the first scorer for the Celtics whereas Jayson Tatum is out.

With the Celtics now 15-9 and having received eight of their final 10 video games, Brown has moved as much as 10th on the NBA’s MVP ladder. He’s main the Celtics in scoring with 29.1 factors per recreation, and was named the newest Eastern Conference Player of the Week.

As Brown turns into concerned within the MVP dialogue, he gave his tackle previous winners and the issue with gamers flopping within the NBA.

“When you wanna be a terrific participant, you gotta promote your soul,” Brown said Monday while streaming. “You gotta be a flopper. When you wanna be an MVP, you wanna be prime of the highest, you gotta promote your soul and simply be a flopper.”

Flopping has been a spot of rivalry within the NBA for years, as this season has seen the highest average number of free throws per recreation because the 2007-2008 season, with 24.8.

As these numbers improve, Brown appears to have a degree relating to the correlation between MVP and free throw numbers.

Final yr’s MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, was second within the league in free throw makes an attempt per recreation (8.8), and this yr he’s averaging 10.2 makes an attempt. He’s solely behind Luka Doncic on this stat for the time being, who, coincidentally, is third within the MVP race.

Together with Gilgeous-Alexander, the 2022-2023 MVP Joel Embiid is infamous for looking to draw fouls. He was additionally second within the league within the yr he received, averaging 11.7 per recreation.

Brown is additional down the record this yr as he solely takes 7.1 per outing, and believes he may need to work on his performing recreation if he needs to take down this award.

“Y’all need me to be on that?” Brown mentioned with reference to flopping. “I can do it. I can begin going to observe and dealing on, like, throwing my head.”

Brown will look to proceed his run at MVP and hold the Celtics’ five-game win streak going because the Celtics subsequent play the Bucks on Thursday.