Baron Davis believes Jaylen Brown’s impressive Philadelphia 76ers debut showed that the veteran forward spent the offseason addressing the parts of his game that previously gave him problems in the playoffs.
Brown made his Philadelphia debut Monday night after arriving from the Boston Celtics and led the 76ers to a 120-97 preseason victory over the New York Knicks. He scored 22 points in just 17 minutes, shooting 8-of-13 from the field and 3-of-5 from three-point range while adding two rebounds and two assists.
Speaking on Gil’s Arena, Davis suggested Brown’s performance reflected deliberate offseason work based on his postseason experiences.
“Because those are all the shots that he was missing in the playoffs, right?” Davis said. “One, two dribble, pulling up, walking somebody down, pulling up.”
Davis believes Brown used the summer to focus specifically on the areas that had limited him when the Celtics faced playoff defenses.
“It just looks like he worked on things that he knew was going to hold him back even if he went back to Boston,” Davis said.
Brown averaged 25.7 points per game during Boston’s 2025-26 playoff run, shooting 45.5% from the field and 40.5% from three-point range across seven games. He also averaged 3.3 assists and 5.7 rebounds, but the Celtics were eliminated in the first round by Philadelphia.
His 2025-26 regular-season numbers represented a career high in scoring. Brown averaged 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds and 5.1 assists over 71 games while shooting 47.7% from the field and 34.7% from three-point range.
Davis believes the key for Brown is maintaining an aggressive mindset rather than becoming overly concerned with individual aspects of his offensive game.
“Now you look at that in a position where if you put Jaylen Brown in attack mode all the time and just let him stay at that, he’s going to do everything else,” Davis said.
His 17-minute workload was limited as Philadelphia managed his first preseason appearance, but the efficiency stood out. Brown made 61.5% of his field-goal attempts and accounted for 22 of Philadelphia’s 120 points despite playing less than half the game.
The performance came as Brown begins a new chapter alongside Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and LeBron James. For Davis, however, the most notable aspect of Brown’s debut was not simply his scoring total but the apparent translation of offseason work into game situations.
