All Lakers’ Alex Kirschenbaum came up with a wild trade proposal that would see the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers — who just played in a 125-121 overtime barnburner in Beantown the Cs won — swap a pair of top 15 scorers in the association.
The two scorers in question would be Jaylen Brown and Anthony Davis, who are both averaging over 26 points per game during the 2022-23 season.
Kirschenbaum’s proposal would also include Robert Williams III to square away the salary differences. Here was the justification provided for such a seismic swap — one Kirschenbaum admitted was highly unlikely:
"“LeBron James is a win-now player, and hasn’t had high-level defensive help along the wing since an ill-fated 2021 offseason, when LA flipped Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and let Alex Caruso walk in free agency in favor of, uh, Talen Horton-Tucker (a real thing that happened). While AD’s ceiling may be a bit higher than Brown’s, Brown is significantly more durable, and adding two high-level players in the place of one stud with balky knees would almost certainly improve the Lakers’ championship odds.”"
It should be noted that Williams recently had arthroscopic knee surgery that kept him out of the first two months of the season. The knees of the ‘Time Lord’ are very much a question mark as well.
The Boston Celtics aren’t star-chasing at the 2023 trade deadline
Boston Celtics President of Basketball Operations Brad Stevens coached Jaylen Brown for the first five seasons of his career, Jayson Tatum the first four, and Marcus Smart the first seven. To see that group get to their first NBA Finals together just to break them up on their first attempt at making another would be demoralizing for the fanbase and locker room.
He knows this, recently commenting that the splashes he is looking for is complementary and not ground-breaking in any sense. And while a decently-sized splash like Bojan Bogdanovic is possible in theory, expect overtures for players like Naz Reid to be the biggest shots Stevens takes.