Whether he meant to or not, Brian Scalabrine has gone completely viral by unearthing the news that Jaylen Brown essentially demanded a trade and was hoping he would be dealt to the Bucks, even going as far as recruiting some of his Celtics teammates to join him there. Scal is hardly a newsbreaker, but he’s obviously very plugged in with the organization and has a great relationship with the team, as he works for NBC Sports Boston.
It would be very out of character for him to just make this up, especially with such specifics, like the rumors about joining the Bucks amid all the Giannis Antetokounmpo chaos playing out. I’m sure this is far from the last thing we’ll hear about this story, but it’s a very interesting tidbit, and given everything that went down, it makes a lot of sense.
And if Brown truly was rooting for himself to get traded to Milwaukee, it adds an element of credence to reports and speculation about him wanting his own team and wanting to leave Boston to be ‘the guy’, which he certainly would have been in a post-Giannis landscape.
If Brown wanted to be 'the guy' it made no sense to keep him in Boston
As JB was leading the Celtics to 56 wins and the No. 2 seed last season, mostly without Jayson Tatum, it brought up a lot of discourse about Brown’s standing among NBA superstars and whether he was good enough to be a first option. This escalated once JT returned and became a huge side story about whose team it was, and all other kinds of nonsense.
But it’s hard to ignore the idea that was floated that the Celtics were worried about Brown being willing to go back to being a number-two option behind Tatum. And honestly, that’s fair. He finished 6th in MVP voting and made second-team All-NBA. If he wanted to have his own team, that’s completely fair.
He had already won a title next to Tatum and proved everything he could in Boston. He’s still 30 years old, and if he’s ever going to rise to another level, it’s now or never. But if those were his true aspirations, as it seems they were, then it’s very clear why Brad Stevens and the Celtics felt that they absolutely needed to trade him over the offseason.
Celtics wanted to be Tatum's team, with or without Brown
The Celtics made a choice that they wanted to build a championship contender around Tatum, and if Brown wasn’t on board with that, he had to go. Could he have settled back in as a complementary player? Perhaps. But he didn’t want that. The current roster is built to play Mazzulla-Ball, to space the floor, to move the ball, to drive and kick, to play team defense, and to maximize Tatum.
While Brown was an awesome player, that’s not him. He liked to take over for stretches, to go off script, to stop the ball, and to fall asleep on defense when he wasn’t guarding the ball. Again, I’m pointing out his deficiencies, which were largely overshadowed by the positives, but it’s a lot different when he’s being asked to play a smaller role, as opposed to being the main guy like he was last season.
So while many fans on the outside looking in thought this relationship was salvageable, and the team could run back the Brown-Tatum duo with everyone on the same page, that may not have been realistic. And if Scal is right, Brown had no interest in getting on that page in the first place. It certainly makes the trade make even more sense from Boston’s side, and it makes it even more ironic that JB ended up in Philly with multiple other ball-dominant superstars.
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