If there’s one thing that has been messaged loud and clear to the NBA by the Boston Celtics, it’s that this is 100% Jayson Tatum’s team. There are no more 1a and 1b conversations after Jaylen Brown has been traded to the 76ers for Paul George, two first-round picks, and two second-round picks.
Rather than move forward with the elite duo, the Celtics have chosen to move forward with one clear alpha and the rest of the team built around him. And that player is Tatum. PG can still be a helpful player, but he’s a role player at this point. He’s there to complement Tatum, not to be a secondary star.
This trade isn’t a full-on salary dump, and the term ‘addition by subtraction’ is too harsh. But for better or worse, this is a bet on the advanced metrics that say the team is better with Brown off the floor. JB got the bulk of the credit for last season, and he was great, but the numbers say that the true success was maximizing possessions with the role players like Hugo Gonzalez, Neemias Queta, Baylor Scheierman, Jordan Walsh, and others.
Now, those players will have a bigger role, and Tatum will step into the role Brown was playing. The team has always been a dominant force with JT on the floor, and the biggest issue has been solving the minutes when he’s off the floor. Brown wasn’t getting it done enough to justify his contract, and the role players were.
The Celtics are 100% Jayson Tatum's team now
Now, Brad Stevens and the Celtics are betting that even more Tatum, complemented by true role players being optimized in their roles, is a better path to success than having Tatum essentially split usage with Brown, despite every metric saying the Tatum-run offense is elite while the Brown-led version was just good.
All the fans who have ever thought that Brown was holding Tatum back, that considering them on the same level was ridiculous, and that the team would be at its best if it treated Tatum as the sun that everything else should revolve around, you’re going to finally get your wish. The Cs may make other moves, but they aren’t going to add a co-star close to Brown’s level, and that’s the way they want it.
They want to see if the stats are true. If the net ratings, EPMs, RAPMs, and other stats tell a real story. They want to see if this CBA dictates building around one supermax player instead of two. And they want to see if Tatum can be even better and more impactful as the clear-cut alpha.
Payton Pritchard is still there, and he should thrive with a bigger role. Derrick White is still there to lead the defense. PG can turn back the clock once in a while. But let's be clear, this is Tatum and everyone else now. It’s sad to see it go down like this, but it’s also exciting in a sense. It’s a new day in Boston. The Jays era is over. Now it’s just the Jayson Tatum era. And maybe that’s the way it should have been all along.
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