The Boston Celtics are back below .500 after their Christmas day matinee loss to the reigning NBA Champions, the Milwaukee Bucks, and, in turn, find themselves even farther away from being considered a legitimate playoff contender.
Despite having two of the best young players in the entire association in Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, the shamrocks as a whole have found themselves struggling over these last two years, which has some questioning if the star tandem can actually go on to lead this team to great successes together.
Though we at HH certainly believe that with the right supporting cast around them they can prove to be a championship-contending duo with the Boston Celtics, there are still an uncomfortable amount of people out there who think the front office must consider the idea of splitting up the Jays and, because of this, the folks at Bleacher Report recently went on to mention Brown on their rankings list for the league’s top-rumored trade targets.
Now, while the All-Star was technically just an ‘honorable mention”, writer Zach Buckley believes that the rumblings alone — regardless of how realistic he believes them to be — warrants him a spot in the piece:
"Not even a week after Brown’s name surfaced in a potential swap for Ben Simmons, as The Athletic’s Shams Charania reported, Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens hurried to extinguish that flame.“I just walked up to Jaylen and said, ‘Your name is all over the place as you know. Obviously, from our standpoint, you’re a Celtic and obviously a guy that we think exceptionally high of. Nothing doing,'” Stevens relayed on 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Toucher and Rich (via Celtics Blog).Sure, executives maybe aren’t the most revealing people at this time of year, but Stevens using “obviously” twice in the same sentence feels noteworthy, if for no other reason than it should be obvious that Brown is off the table.The 25-year-old booked his first All-Star trip last season and has generally dazzled on both ends of the floor. While his theoretical trade value is through the roof, he makes much more sense as a building block for Boston, not a trade chip—at least not until there is indisputable evidence that the Brown-Jayson Tatum partnership isn’t working."
By no means do we believe there to be any serious discussions being considered regarding the Boston Celtics star for, despite the team’s lackluster turnout thus far, Brown finds himself having another high-level campaign with per-game averages of 22.6 points, 5.3 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 1.3 steals, and half a block on 46 percent shooting from the floor and 38 percent shooting from deep.
Having said that, while we absolutely believe the organization should try to add on a third-star before even considering splitting the tandem apart, outside of the likes of, say, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, and Giannis Antetokounmpo, there’s a price for just about everyone in the NBA.
While Brown, like Tatum, should essentially be viewed as an untouchable commodity for the Boston Celtics, if they were to be presented with a Godfather type of offer, at the very least Stevens and co. should weigh their options.