Throughout the first 10 games of action, the Boston Celtics have shown flashes of what they could be as currently constructed, with their impressive blow-out victory against the top-seeded Miami Heat serving as a prime example of just how much potential they truly have.
However, these spurts of success are too few and far in between for anyone to be confident in the team’s abilities to put it all together, and recent reports seemingly suggest the front office is already looking into ways in which they can make some big splashes to help guide the Cs in the right direction.
According to a new report by The Athletic’s NBA insider Shams Charania (subscription required), Brad Stevens and co. have gone about and reached out to the Philadelphia 76ers in regard to the availability of their estranged All-Star, Ben Simmons. Per the report, the asking price for the point guard is still rather pricy, as Philly is apparently uninterested unless All-Star wing, Jaylen Brown, is included in the return package:
"“The Boston Celtics have engaged in conversations with the 76ers revolving around Simmons and expressed interest in the 6-foot-11 guard, sources tell The Athletic. Talks have been fluid with no traction as of yet, those sources say. Any potential Simmons deal with the Celtics would have to include All-Star forward Jaylen Brown, an ascending talent who is in the midst of another career season, averaging 25.6 points, 6.1 rebounds and 2.5 assists.”"
In response to this, Boston Celtics fans have taken to the Twitterverse to express their displeasure with such a report, suggesting that the franchise absolutely should not be interested in making such a move if it were to include their sixth-year baller.
For the record, we at HH are certainly of this same mindset, as we believe that the longer Simmons remains in Philadelphia and subsequently out of their lineup, the lower his trade value will continue to plummet, which likely would lead to no Brown being needed.
That said, while we’re not interested in seeing the Boston Celtics trading the 25-year-old star in this exchange, this is not to say we’d completely write off the idea of potentially seeing him shopped in the future — after all, with how the shamrocks have played thus far into the year, desperate times call for desperate measures.
No, we don’t want such a transaction to happen where we see Jaylen Brown sent packing, but an interesting question to ponder on is who would potentially be worth exchanging him for.
While the list of players is not all that long, today we discuss 2 talents that could be considered worthy of being targeted in a hypothetical trade involving Brown: