Jaylen Brown’s playoff success is proving Danny Ainge right ... again

Jaylen Brown was a top pick at the 2016 NBA Draft, but he was anything but a sure thing for the Boston Celtics. The third choice in a two-man show, Brown was a ball of potential whose low-efficiency offense in one year at Cal struggled to justify his lofty draft status. Mock drafts pegged him as a top-10 player, but it was still a bit of a surprise when general manager Danny Ainge tapped him as the player to follow Ben Simmons and Brandon Ingram off the draft board.

In 2016, Brown was Ainge’s lottery ticket. On Tuesday night, he paid off.

The second-year swingman exploded for 30 points in a Game 2 win over the Milwaukee Bucks, establishing himself as the team’s offensive bellwether in a postseason without scorers Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward in the lineup. After taking 11.5 shots per contest during the regular season, he’s upped his usage to the tune of 41 shots over two playoff games. And while he still has some growing to do — his inability to get to the free-throw line meant he needed 19 shots to score 20 points in Game 1 — he’s proving he can shoulder the load for a resilient Celtics’ team.

Brown was a five-star recruit out of Marietta, Georgia, destined for a one-and-done NCAA career. His lone year at California wasn’t a failure, but it wasn’t a lights-out success either. The Golden Bears crashed out of the NCAA tournament despite Brown’s team-leading 14.6 points per game, thanks in part to his inefficient finish to the season.

In his final five games at Cal — two regular season, two in the Pac-12 tournament, and one in the big dance — Brown scored fewer than eight points per contest. He made just 21 percent of his shots from the field, which included a 1-of-6 performance in a first-round NCAA tournament loss that should have served as a showcase game leading up to that year’s draft.

Brown finished the season shooting just 43 percent from the field and 29 percent from long range, but his potential was clear. His season featured six 20+ point games, including a 27-point explosion against Utah. He earned first-team All-Pac-12 honors and was named the conference’s freshman of the year. More importantly, he showcased the hyperactive defense and insane athleticism that caught Ainge’s eye.

Selecting Brown seemed like a curious choice for the Celtics at the time. Brown’s skillset was similar to a wing who had already developed into one of the league’s best bargains in Boston, Jae Crowder. The three-and-D forward thrived in Boston, developing from overlooked second-round pick to starter for the Eastern Conference’s top seed in his three seasons with the team.

But Ainge was playing with house money after effectively stealing the No. 3 pick from Brooklyn in a deal that shipped aging veterans Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Jason Terry to the Nets in exchange for three first-round picks (2014, 2016, 2018) and the right to swap picks in 2017. He could afford to take the player with the highest ceiling at No. 3, knowing that if Brown was a bust, his team would be insulated. Meanwhile, the Cal star could develop slowly; head coach Brad Stevens played him more than 24 minutes just once over his first 42 games as a pro.

Brown was asked to focus on his defense and shooting under Stevens. Three-pointers made up 26 percent of his offensive output in his lone season at Cal, but the Celtics gave him the green light to dial that up to 32 percent as a rookie. With Isaiah Thomas, Al Horford, and Avery Bradley sharing the team’s scoring load, Brown was allowed to build his three-and-D credentials while refining the potential that made him a top three pick. And no one could question his hustle.

He showed off enough improvement to give Boston the latitude to make some major deals in 2017. Thomas, Bradley, and Crowder were shipped out in deals that returned Kyrie Irving and Marcus Morris. The team was being built to surpass the prior year’s Eastern Conference Finals standard, but Brown wasn’t given the keys just yet. Ainge signed another max contract free agent who happened to play small forward when he nabbed all-star Gordon Hayward A second-straight No. 3 pick — Jayson Tatum — added even more talent with which Brown would compete on the wing.

Brown was slotted into Boston’s starting lineup on opening night in 2017, but was pressed into 40 minutes of action when Hayward suffered a dislocated ankle that erased his first season with the Celtics off the books. He responded with a 25-point performance — at the time a career high.

His sophomore season was a journey of peaks and valleys. Tatum’s presence and ability to contribute from Day 1 pressed Brown into more action at shooting guard. That meant he spent even more time behind the arc in Stevens’ green-light system. In year two, Brown’s three-point rate rose even higher, taking up more than 38 percent of his total shots.

Improvements were there, but consistency was not. Brown would drop 26 points one night (Dec. 13 vs. Denver) and then six two days later (Dec. 15 vs. Utah). He’d spring for a 4-for-6 performance from long range on Dec. 23, then go 0-for-5 from deep on Christmas. Even so, his good nights were enough to earn all-star buzz, at least from Draymond Green.

While he wasn’t the most reliable player, Boston’s depth meant he didn’t have to be. His talent shined through. His shooting leveled up as he made more than 39 percent of his threes on the year. His defense, once streaky and risky, stabilized. His win shares per minute nearly doubled. He overcame loss and injury to recharge a Celtics’ team in danger of falling apart late in the season as teammates spent more and more time in the training room than on the court.

Those leaps came as a part of a supporting cast, but Brown’s playoff performance — while in an extremely small sample size — suggests he’s capable of exceeding in a larger role. Without Heyward or Irving in the lineup, he’s been asked to be the engine behind the Celtic offense.

He has 50 points through two postseason starts after coming off the bench for all of the 2017 playoffs. He’s played 79 combined minutes against the Bucks after playing just 29 minutes in all of last year’s six-game opening series against the Bulls. Despite that extended playing time, and he’s yet to commit a turnover this postseason.

The Boston Celtics needed someone to step up after a rash of injuries ravaged their roster. Through two playoff games, that’s been Brown. On Tuesday, he became the youngest player in franchise history to ever spring for 30-plus points in the postseason. He did so with a series of dagger threes that extinguished any hope Milwaukee had of a comeback.

That’s exactly what Boston needs right now — and exactly what Ainge hoped he was getting when he took a calculated gamble on the blue chip talent out of Cal at the 2016 draft.