Celtics’ Brad Stevens Discusses Jaylen Brown Trade

“When I looked at our team and where the league was heading, looked at the way that we’ve finished the last couple years and at the unbelievable way we’ve played in the regular season in the last couple years, the path looked a little bit more challenging to me,” Stevens said. “I might be wrong. I’m not going to stand up here and be defensive about that, but the path looked a little bit more challenging, with 70% of our cap and such a high percent of our usage tied into two players (Brown and Jayson Tatum).

“The reality in this day and age at the NBA, and you could see it obviously with the last couple of champions … you have to do a great job of building out depth that can hopefully replace the irreplaceable individual. And that’s not an easy thing to do. And that’s absolutely nothing against Jaylen. If you have Jaylen Brown on your team, you should feature him, you should use all those possessions and you should approach things that way. But I think the importance of depth and then obviously, we have to continue to work on ways to diversify our attack overall.”

While there has been speculation that the relationship between the Celtics and Brown had deteriorated to the point that Stevens felt the team couldn’t bring him back, he denied that the front office felt that way, telling reporters, “We didn’t feel like we had to do something.”

Stevens added that Brown and the Celtics weren’t disgruntled with one another and that he was optimistic any hard feelings created by the five-time All-Star’s name coming up so frequently in trade rumors this summer could’ve been smoothed over if the club had ultimately decided not to make a move.

“It was very loud and, obviously, there was a lot of talk everywhere,” Stevens said of the trade rumors leading up to the deal with Philadelphia. “But we still weren’t going to do anything unless we felt like it was the right return. And the return for us was two-fold. It was, number one, is there an opportunity to get somebody in the door or get tools that could allow you to get others in the door, that could keep you at a good level. And number two, would there be assets attached that would then be usable in future deals.

“At the end of the day, we made what I think was a really hard decision. One that comes with very little sleep to do the trade.”

While Stevens did reference the fact that the combination of Brown and Tatum was taking up such a significant percentage of the Celtics’ cap, he suggested that was more about cap management than the money itself. Team owner Bill Chisholm, who also appeared at Monday’s presser, insisted the deal wasn’t financially motivated, stating that it was about putting Boston in a better position to contend in the long term.

“It’s not about the money at all,” Chisholm said. “This was, again, trying to put together the right set of players and assets to win now, to win next year, the following year, the year after that. That’s what this was about. None of these were about money. We have some more room now. If we see something we wanted, Brad’s got the green light to do that.

“I know people feel like, ‘Oh, there must be a smoking gun somewhere around the money.’ That’s just not what this is about. And I can say it and I’ll keep saying it, but I’ll also prove it to you. When we have the opportunity, we’re going to do that and we’ve given ourselves the flexibility to do it now. So, it’s fine to keep asking the question because I know we have to prove it, and we will.”

George’s $54.1MM cap hit in 2026/27 isn’t far off Brown’s figure $57.7MM, but the newest Boston forward has a $56.6MM player option for ’27/28, whereas Brown’s super-max contract will pay him guaranteed salaries of $61.7MM in ’27/28 and $65.6MM in ’28/29.

The fact that George’s deal will expire a year earlier could create more trade possibilities for the Celtics next summer, when it will become an expiring contract — based on Stevens’ comments about “building out depth,” he may envision flipping George and draft assets for multiple rotation players down the road. Still, while George’s perceived value has dropped significantly over the past two seasons as he battled knee issues, Stevens made it clear he values what the 36-year-old can do on the court.

“We like Paul,” Stevens said. “Paul’s a really good player. We’re not very far removed from our (playoff) series against Philadelphia and watching Paul be a guy that could carry you for portions of a quarter or a half, but also play a complementary role on both ends of the floor at the highest of levels.”

After word of the Brown deal broke, Stevens was widely criticized for accepting what is widely viewed as a light return for an All-NBA second-teamer. Acknowledging on Monday that he isn’t oblivious to that criticism, the Celtics’ president suggested that time will tell whether the front office made a mistake.

“What we ultimately decided could be right or wrong,” he said, per Chris Mannix of SI.com. “It’s obviously unpopular and most people think it’ll be wrong. We assessed everything. We spent a lot of time on it. We spent a lot of time on the game. We spent a lot of time on our team. We spent a lot of time on what this thing might look like down the road. Spent a lot of time on an alternative and ultimately this is where we landed.”