By trading Jaylen Brown, the Celtics are making big bets

Trading a franchise icon after the best season of his career is going to be an extremely unpopular decision within your fanbase. Yet, that is what the Celtics just did by trading Jaylen Brown to the rival Philadelphia 76ers for Paul George, two first round picks and two second round picks.

There is a basketball reason that the Celtics did this. The cap sheet played into it and not paying two players the 35% max for years and years to come definitely played a role in this, especially in the second apron era.

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However, Paul George is only making about $3 million less than Brown will this season and has one fewer season left on his deal, so money isn’t the entire reason Boston wanted to make this move so badly.

The Celtics are making two big bets by moving Brown and they are very much interwoven.

The first is that they don’t believe Jaylen Brown is as good as the fans and Boston media do.

ESPN’s Brian Windhorst was the first to mention this on The Hoop Collective podcast the night of the trade.

“The Celtics felt that even though Jaylen Brown was talking about himself for MVP or there was this MVP campaign for Jaylen Brown, the Celtics did not feel that Jaylen had the best season on their team. They felt that Derrick White had a better season.”

You probably disagree with that take and so do I, but I believe that they believe it.

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Brown is a great player, who carried the Celtics offense for much of the seaso,n made All-NBA second team and finished 6th in MVP voting.

Yet, according to databallr.com, the Celtics were 6.2 points per 100 possessions better with Brown off the court vs. when he was on.

Yesterday, Brad Stevens talked about how maximizing Jaylen is maximizing his usage and that having two players taking up that much usage doesn’t work in the modern NBA.

Stevens, and the rest of the Celtics brass, clearly don’t think that having two players who always need the ball, isn’t a formula for winning anymore and that it was time for them to move off of that philosophy.

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This ties into the second bet that Stevens and the Celtics are making: the infrastructure they have is…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/trading-jaylen-brown-celtics-making-085400827.html

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Publish date : 2026-07-07 08:54:00

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