In the hours leading up to the blockbuster trade between the Milwaukee Bucks and Miami Heat that sent Giannis Antetokounmpo to South Beach, several insiders reported that the Boston Celtics were the favorites to secure the two-time MVP. But as of Monday night, June 22, Boston was left holding nothing but the bag with regards to Jaylen Brown.
Brown remains under contract with the Celtics for the next three seasons on a five-year deal worth $285.4 million total, $183 million of which the team still owes him through 2028-29. And it was no secret that because of his talent and his salary number, Brown was going to be the key personnel piece involved in any trade between Boston and Milwaukee for Antetokounmpo.
Of course, Brown was also well aware of that. He has had complaints in the past about NBA media, fans and even his own team failing to value him appropriately. So knowing the organization, at the very least, strongly considered trading him for a player the Celtics obviously deem as, or likely more, valuable isn’t liable to sit well with a prideful player who has often felt disrespected.
Celtics Missed Out on Upgraded Pairing of Jayson Tatum, Giannis Antetokounmpo
GettyJaylen Brown (left) and Jayson Tatum (right) of the Boston Celtics.
Zach Kram and Ben Oliver of ESPN dubbed Boston among their “losers” of the deal in its aftermath, with a primary reason for that classification the issue(s) the Celtics now face with their 1B superstar behind 1A Jayson Tatum.
The rest of the league should be relieved: Antetokounmpo and Jayson Tatum would have given the Celtics the best one-two punch in the NBA. The Celtics could have desperately used Antetokounmpo’s downhill attacks to balance an offense that became overly 3-point dependent during its first-round flameout, and he also would have helped address some of the Celtics’ interior defense problems.
Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens must now sort through his options with Jaylen Brown: Does he find another trade or try to mend fences?
Boston May Not Be Able, Willing to Salvage Burned Bridges With Jaylen Brown
GettyJaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics.
League insider Kevin O’Connor of Yahoo Sports predicted shortly after the deal that Boston will opt for the former and look to move Brown in some other deal.
“I would expect, from my conversations with people around the league, that Boston is going to continue trying to trade Jaylen Brown,” O’Connor said, per Nick Cattles on X. “Giannis was simply Plan A. What is Plan B? I don’t know exactly. I would think that Boston is in on Trey Murphy.”
Murphy is an excellent player, but he’s a far cry from Brown who has a ring and an NBA Finals MVP on his resumé along with five All-Star appearances and two second-team All-NBA selections, each of which have come within the past four years (2023, 2026).
Busting up a proven championship duo in Tatum and Brown, who have played in the NBA Finals twice together in the past five years, made some sense if the end result was a Tatum-Antetokounmpo pairing.
But scrapping the Brown-Tatum partnership now, after the Heat just added a dominant player and the New York Knicks are celebrating a championship, is far less logical. Given O’Connor’s report-based projection, that begs the question of whether simply entertaining a trade swapping Brown and Antetokounmpo was the end of the Tatum-Brown tandem in Boston.
And if it was, the Celtics’ failure to execute the deal renders them perhaps the biggest losers of all in a trade with which they didn’t actually end up involved.
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