WTF

The Jaylen Brown Trade

We were trying to stay cool in the shade behind the outfield fence while watching Jackson’s District 15 Little League All-Star Tournament game when a kid came over and shared the news that Jaylen Brown had been traded for Paul George, two firsts and two seconds.

I would sum up the collective reaction in three letters: WTF.

A father shared it with his son when he came out to play centerfield and asked him if he liked the trade, and the kid flatly responded, ‘No.’

A friend of mine texted a graphic summarizing the trade with the note, “Did you see this crap?”

The PA announcer went from announcing a kid’s name as the batter after he was already standing on second base to sharing the trade details.

An ice cream truck came by the field. The poor kids in the dugout, who normally would have sprinted en masse over to the ice cream man, were forced to stay in the dugout under the watchful eye of the coaches.

And it seemed like an apt metaphor because the Celtics didn’t get their Greek Freak-flavored first choice either.

So instead they pivoted to the spinach truck.

And thus we are left with two incongruent facts:

1) Brad Stevens has been an exceptionally capable executive. He has won NBA Executive of the Year twice in the past three seasons and is one of only 12 multiple-time winners in NBA history. We are not dealing with Craig Breslow here, folks.

2) The trade itself absolutely blows in terms of making the Celtics better in the near-term. One parent compared the aging Paul George to Mr. Potato Head, with limbs constantly falling off.

There is no way to argue that this trade does not greatly reduce the Celtics’ chances of a title during at least one and likely two years of 28-year-old Jayson Tatum’s prime.

In the past five seasons, he has averaged 48 games played, missing over 40% of his team’s games. Last year he played in 37 games. In the past 10 years, from ages 26 to 35, his teams have never reached the NBA Finals and have only reached the conference finals once.

Oh, yeah, he is now 36.

The 2028 first-round pick terms are mind-numbingly complex, but it could essentially be a high first-round pick only if the Clippers, Sixers, or Celtics are really bad. Well, the odds of one of those things just got higher.

The 2031 pick is unprotected. It would also be in the next decade. Maybe they can draft Deuce Tatum at that point.

I think you all know what ‘WTF’ usually means.

But when the facts are this incongruent, it often makes sense to take a step back and replace the ‘What’ with ‘Why?’

So I will now dig into W(hy)TF Brad might have made this seemingly illogical move.

1) He did not want the Celtics to be the NBA version of house-poor.

Tatum and Brown together would have eaten up around 70% of Boston’s cap space over the next three years, constraining his freedom to build a championship roster around them as he did with Jrue and KP in the 2023-24 season. And that assumes he even believed that the duo could be the core of a championship winner again. As anyone who has ever stretched beyond their means to buy a house knows, you can end up regretting that lack of subsequent financial flexibility.

Brown and George will make close to the same money over the next two seasons, assuming George exercises his player option for 2027-2028, which seems likely since he would be making $56.5M as a 38-year-old.

George will be off the books by the summer of 2028, assuming he is not traded before then, which he most likely would be, because an expiring contract is a valuable asset in the NBA. If not extended, Brown would have had one year remaining at that point, but if the Celtics had kept Brown and extended him, they would have been locked in for three more years.

Without going through all the gymnastics of the apron, second apron, etc., keeping Brown tied to one of Stevens’ hands behind his back in terms of future flexibility. George gives him some more freedom to operate.

2) NBA execs do not value Brown as highly as Celtic fans do.

While the Bobby Marks report this weekend that some analytics types rate Brown as the seventh-best player on a team was as ridiculous as the guy in your fantasy league wanting to trade you Brayan Bello for Shohei Ohtani, it sounds like the market for Brown was not nearly as robust as his 6th-place MVP finish would have you believe.

I have seen speculation that the Celtics’ new private-equity-backed buyers are pulling a John Henry and gutting the roster to save money. I am not saying it couldn’t be the case, but I think the new ownership deserves more of the benefit of the doubt than that and a longer track record to see if that is a pattern. And if that is the case, why add Mitchell Robinson and Mike Conley in free agency earlier in the day?

This tweet below may get closer to the truth.

This stat is pretty damming of Brown and may explain why the Bucks chose Miami’s offer and why Stevens could not get more for Brown. The Celtics, over the ten years Brown has been here, have been better with him off the court than on it. In each of the past four seasons, this has been true, and most critically, it has been true in the playoffs as well.

Notice the other two players who have spent all or much of their time with the Celtics over that period - Jayson Tatum and Al Horford are both hugely positive.

Of the 23 active 5 time NBA All-Stars, only Brown and DeMar DeRozan fall into that bucket.

Brown was not going to turn a bad team into a contender, so that limited his value to contending teams, where he might play a third- or fourth-option role.

Even the most ardent Jaylen Brown supporter will concede that he turns the ball over far too often when dribbling and that he is not a great passer. Over the past four seasons, 85 players have averaged at least four assists per game. Brown ranks 84th in assist-to-turnover ratio, ahead of only new teammate Joel Embiid.

His true shooting percentage is essentially league average.

He is certainly far better than what he got traded for, but he is not nearly as good as his surface stats would have you believe and NBA executives were not willing to pay a superstar price to land him.

3) The relationship with Brown was past the point of rescue.

Brad did not HAVE to do something, so even if Philly’s was the best offer on the table, there was the option to keep him and try to repair the relationship. Even if no ‘Godfather’ offer was coming, believing in this one and trading him to your biggest conference rival is like believing in a fairy godmother.

I have no inside knowledge of the relationship between Brown and the Celtics, though I suspect a lot will come out in the coming weeks.

Bottom Line

I tried to do the WhyTF approach. I really did.

There may well be other moves to come.

But as things stand, it still does not add up to me.

And so I am back to the reaction everyone had last night.

WTF.