Jaylen Brown’s Recent Celtics Quote Doesn’t Bode Well For Baylor Scheierman

Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla had a question to answer about his bench entering the 2025-26 NBA season. Who was going to get the most minutes as the bench wings? A preseason competition emerged between freshmen Hugo Gonzalez, Jordan Walsh and Baylor Shearman, and Gonzalez won that battle.

Walsh has also recently become a part of Boston’s rotation, leaving Sheuerman as the odd man out among the young trio.

When Celtics star Jaylen Brown was talking about Boston’s bench depth recently, he didn’t mention Sheuerman. This wasn’t an intentional slight on JB’s part or anything, but more of a sign or reminder to us that Scheuerman is more or less out of the map of Mazzulla’s game plan on a nightly basis.

“Jordan, Hugo, and Josh (Minot), you know, they’ve been rotating between who gets minutes, who starts, and I think their mentality has all been the same,” Brown said, per WEEI’s Justin Turpin. “So we have to continue to strengthen it.”

Brown also mentioned Josh Minot, a big wing capable of playing the three or four spots for the Celtics.

It’s been a tough series of events for Scheierman, who was selected by the Celtics with the No. 30 overall pick in the 2024 NBA draft.

Scheuermann has actually shot the ball well from three this year (52.6 percent), but his lack of defensive value has kept him behind Gonzalez and Walsh, neither of whom are a terrible shooter in their own right.

Many have compared Sheuerman’s ability to current Celtics sharpshooter Sam Houser, but even as a defender, Sheuerman is miles away from Hauser.

There’s still hope for Scheuerman to break into the NBA (if not with the Celtics, then with someone else), especially because he’s already shown he can shoot with the best of them, exploding for some big scoring games.

To stay anywhere, Scheuermann will have to work hard to massively improve defensively, even more than he already has. He needs to reach a minimum level to be playable, and his fellow Creighton alumnus Kyle Korver would be a good guy to study in that regard, as would Doug McDermott (another Creighton Bluejay).

Korver and McDermott were both athletically challenged on defense, but they used their brain power and basketball IQ to maximize their value on that end, and a lot of that comes from always being in the right position.

Right now, the tenacious defense of Gonzalez and Walsh is the exact opposite of the defense provided by Scheuerman on D for the Celtics, and Mazzulla knows it. That doesn’t mean Baylor isn’t an extremely talented player. He was a first round pick! This is another example of how impossible it is to earn a consistent role on an NBA roster.