Listening to the latest Bill Simmons podcast, where he and his dad discussed, among other things, the Jaylen Brown trade, it really hit me that almost a month removed, people still don’t understand the move. Simmons and his dad appeared to be completely clueless as to why the Celtics might want to do this deal, beating around the bush when there’s a pretty simple answer here. The Celtics didn’t want Jaylen Brown.
At the end of the day, that’s the number one thing that went into this. We don’t know when the actual moment occurred when Brad Stevens and company reached the decision, but it’s blatantly clear that they wanted Brown off the team.
In a league with a salary cap that’s now essentially acting as a hard cap, the Celtics looked at every piece of evidence, both on and off the court, and concluded that they are better off building a championship contender with Jaylen off the team. That’s what drove the decision. That’s why they didn’t wait. That’s why the return is what it is. And really, that’s the ‘why’ that drives almost every question.
Sure, there was plenty of nuance and context that went into this move and got us to where we are now, but all of that is just semantics. The real tipping point is that they decided to move on from Brown. They wanted to see what life is like without him, and the act of shopping him around the league and negotiating for almost a month was really just the payoff. The big decision had already been made. By then, it was just a matter of what they could get back.
Celtics likely viewed trading Brown as addition by subtraction
Boston trusts the advanced metrics, and the less advanced ones, that all scream the same thing: the Celtics are just as good, or better, when he sits. So why pay 35% of the salary cap for that player? That’s what the Celtics have been asking themselves, and they’ve come to the answer that they shouldn’t be.Â
They’ll never admit it, nor should they, but they equate this move to addition by subtraction. Getting Paul George, who should be a nice fit in the system despite being overpaid, a couple of premium first-round picks, and a couple of seconds was really just a bonus. The big payoff for Boston is removing Brown and seeing what the team looks like without him, fully leaning into a system and identity with Joe Mazzulla running the show and Jayson Tatum as the head of the snake.
It’s a bold stance to take, and one that could obviously backfire in epic fashion, but there shouldn’t be some grand mystery as to why the Celtics did this deal. They did it to get out of the Jaylen Brown business. The idea that they got to ‘dump’ him on a rival may have even been a cherry on top for the Celtics’ ever-confident front office. Fans don’t have to like it, but they should at least accept it. Actions speak louder than words, and the actions taken by Stevens over the last month have spoken quite loudly and definitively.
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