Boston Celtics: C&C proposes Luka Doncic for Jayson Tatum swap

Chowder and Champions’ Tarringo Basile-vaughan believes there is one trade that would entice the Dallas Mavericks to send Luka Doncic to the Boston Celtics, and it would have to involve the inclusion of 2x All-Star and notorious All-NBA snub Jayson Tatum.

Basile-vaughan is right on the money. Without Tatum, the eventual front office replacement for Donnie Nelson likely hangs up on new President of Basketball Operations Brad Stevens.

With Jaylen Brown recently going down with a season-ending wrist injury, Tatum is the only healthy All-Star on the roster. Given Doncic’s MVP trajectory, Tatum is the only player that you can even think to replace him with in the hopes of fielding a competitive roster moving forward.

The Mavericks are a team built around the singular talents of Doncic. The attention he gets due to his dominant isolation scoring opens up the offense for his teammates, whose roles are all variations of catch-and-shooters or backdoor cutters meant to complement the Slovenian stud.

Replacing him with just Brown sends the Mavericks down into yearly lottery also-rans until they can draft another player capable of creating their own offense.

Tatum at least gives them an outside chance of reaching the postseason until all of the outbound Boston Celtics draft picks in a hypothetical Doncic deal turn into anything of substance. Without Brown, Tatum was able to singlehandedly lead the Cs to a postseason victory over a full-strength Brooklyn Nets squad…this after scoring 50 points in the NBA Play-in tournament to even get Boston into the playoffs.

As Basile-vaughan notes, Boston would benefit from this hypothetical arrangement as well. The fit of Brown alongside Doncic is, on paper at least, an infinitely smoother one than having two ball-dominant #1 options competing for touches.

So if a Doncic deal goes down–which is an extremely unlikely scenario considering the whole Mavericks organizational power structure is crumbling around him (maybe to appease him?)–expect the Boston Celtics to jump to the front of the line due to the dangling of their former #3 pick…from 2017.