“A quick word on Jaylen Brown, as his sticky situation continues to loom so large over this offseason. Barring a drastic and unforeseen change in the market, the Boston Celtics will have to significantly lower their asking price if they plan on trading him anytime soon.”
The above excerpt from The Athletic’s Sam Amick’s latest on the Jaylen Brown situation tells you all you need to know about how dysfunctional the Boston Celtics’ offseason has become. Over the past three days or so, we’ve all seen a widespread smear campaign of Brown and how he’s valued around the league from the national media.
This isn’t to discredit Amick’s sources, or those of other big time media players like Shams Charania and Bobby Marks, who had shared that an executive told him that Brown is analytically the seventh best player on a team. I do not doubt that they are being told these things. They also happen to be being told these things by teams who have it in their best interest to diminish Brown’s value.
Is everyone stupid now?
The sheer condescending notion that the Celtics are “asking too much” for one of their franchise pillars over the past decade is nonsense. JB just finished his 10th season with the Cs. He was named to Second Team All-NBA, his fifth All-Star team and finished sixth in MVP voting. Boston hasn’t missed the playoffs since drafting him, and Brown has been a major player for them throughout his tenure.
He certainly doesn’t suck, as the collective reporting would tell you.
To public knowledge, Brown hasn’t formally requested a trade. He may be “frustrated” after hearing his name in trade talks over the past month, as The Boston Globe’s Adam Himmelsbach reported on Monday, but they don’t have to trade him.
Nevermind having to take some lowball offer to offload him.
Do opposing front offices think that the Celtics are going to see these leaks and say, “Wow, we really are asking too much. Maybe we should take three Hardwood Houdini writers back in a trade for Jaylen??”
The Celtics are to blame, too
The Celtics, by the way, shouldn’t get off scot-free (or whatever the phrase is), either. Including Brown in trade talks for Giannis Antetokounmpo made sense. In the world of rainbows and sunshine where Giannis became a Celtic last week, they would’ve moved one of their top players to get an even better player -- of which there are few.
That didn’t happen, and the reporting since has been that the Cs are continuing to shop him. Whether that is at his request or on their own accord isn’t known. If it is, and they had planned to try and move him previously, wouldn’t it have just made more sense to try and do it last summer?
That way, if they were going to have to take less value, as the reporting is trying to make us believe, they could’ve at least gotten a higher draft pick in a loaded draft class. Brown’s torn meniscus would’ve made some teams reluctant, but the story is the same despite an incredible season.
We’re also at a point with this whole trade saga where no one knows anything. Pick any angle you want; the Celtics are shopping Jaylen, the Celtics aren’t shopping him, teams are interested, teams aren’t interested -- there’s reporting that will back you on every single one of them.
Every few days, a new narrative is pushed, the internet reacts, and those dumb prediction market sites post their new odds for Brown’s next team. We’ll find out what his future is when the time is right. Boston has no reason to rush into anything. Brown is under contract for three more seasons. The Celtics have both their full mid-level exception and bi-annual exceptions to try and use to fine-tune their fringes in free agency. They could theoretically re-add the necessary depth to compete with the Eastern Conference’s best.
Their best path to doing so is with Brown.
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