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Despite having Jayson Tatum for a grand total of 522 minutes during the 2025-26 regular season, the Boston Celtics won nearly 70% of their games, finished in the top five in the NBA in both offensive and defensive efficiency, and landed the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference. They reached that level of success thanks, in large part, to Tatum’s longtime running mate Jaylen Brown turning in the finest individual season of his career en route to a sixth-place finish in MVP voting and an All-NBA Second Team selection.
After that, though, the Celtics traded Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers this summer — a move that you might have heard just a teensy bit about over the past five months, and that has been driving no small amount of conversation ahead of the first meeting of the season between Boston and Philly on Tuesday night.
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Since that tectonic roster shift, as they seek to chart a new path forward with a shuffled-up rotation and without a franchise cornerstone, the Celtics have … won 80% of their games, rank in the top seven in the NBA in both offensive and defensive efficiency, and sit in the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference.
The more things change, the more they stay the same?
This, to some degree, was the bet that Brad Stevens made when he made the decision to move Brown for Paul George, two first-round picks and two second-round picks. In the longer term, exchanging Brown — who has three years and $185 million remaining on his contract, and is also in line for an extension — for George — who makes less this season, has a player option for next season, and comes off the books one year earlier — tidies up the Celtics’ balance sheet moving forward, potentially putting them in better position to remain competitive in the race for the top of the East several years down the line. (Say it with me, Brad: “optionality!”)
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In the here-and-now, though, Stevens wagered that, as excellent as Brown was last season and as vital as he’s been to the Celtics’ perennial success for the past decade, the surrounding talent and head coach Joe Mazzulla’s system would provide enough insulation…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/how-jayson-tatum-and-the-celtics-havent-skipped-a-beat-without-jaylen-brown-160510676.html
Author : Dan Devine
Publish date : 2026-11-10 15:59:00
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