In Walker’s two seasons with the team, his touches went from 70.8 a game for a total time of possession of 5.9 minutes to 72.2 touches for a time of 5.6 minutes. However, Walker still dominated the ball while he repped the green and white. To be fair to Walker, he acknowledged and accepted his backseat role knowing it was going to be Brown and Tatum’s team. When Irving left, the Celtics signed another ball-dominant star in Kemba Walker. Obviously, both Brown and Tatum were very young in their NBA careers at the time, so it makes sense that Irving had the ball in his hands as often as he did. On the other hand, Brown’s touches and total possession dropped from 38.9 to 31.8 and 1.5 to 1.2 minutes. In the 2018-19 season, Tatum’s touches increased to 45.6 touches a game (two minutes of total possession). Brown in the same season had 38.9 touches and had the ball for 1.5 minutes per game. In contrast to Tatum’s rookie season, he averaged 42.7 touches having the ball in his hands for 1.8 minutes per game. Although Kyrie’s total time on the ball went down in the 2018-19 season his overall touches went up. The following season Irving had 76.8 touches (31.1 front court touches) for 5.5 minutes and 4.27 seconds per touch. In the 2017-18 season, Irving had 76.0 touches per game (29.9 of those touches occurring in the front court) for a total of 6.1 minutes (4.82 seconds per touch per game). When Kyrie was at the helm, the offense had to go through him and he demanded the ball, limiting the touches of younger versions of Tatum and Brown. With Smart now in Memphis and Derrick White running the offense, there will be plenty of times throughout the game where Tatum or Brown will bring the ball up the court. You want your stars with the ball in their hands and having a player like Kristaps Porzingis will force both Brown and Tatum to have the ball more. It’s still the two-man show, but the third star will be standing at 7’3 instead of 6’3. Ever since Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum have been the undisputed cornerstones of the franchise, the third star was always a guard, whether the star was Kyrie Irving, Kemba Walker, or to a certain extent, Marcus Smart.
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