Jaylen Brown is not exonerated for his role in the Boston Celtics plummeting to the brink of playoff elimination.
Yes, he’s underperformed. Yes, he’s on the record for wanting this opportunity, previously acknowledging that when called upon to be ‘the guy,’ but so far hasn’t. Yes, the mask was cool at first but has since become strange due to Brown’s indecisiveness on when to wear it. Yet, to jump overboard — while understandable — to the point of reintroducing (yet again) trade chit-chat involving Brown, is ludicrous.
After the Celtics dropped Game 5 in shocking, but also embarrassing fashion Tuesday night against the Philadelphia 76ers, FOX Sports’ Colin Cowherd took it upon himself to pull a lazy sports media tactic and whip up some live television talk show fodder Wednesday morning. For some reason, Cowherd pitched the idea of the Celtics dealing Brown — and Malcolm Brogdon — to the Golden State Warriors for a substandard return that’ll rile up the TD Garden crowd better than the C’s were able to in Game 5.
“I think the Celtics have to make a move, and I’ll throw this out to you: Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum doesn’t necessarily work because Brown’s got more alpha, but Tatum’s the better player,” Cowherd said, per FOX Sports video. “But if you brought Jordan Poole and (Andrew) Wiggins in from the Warriors, Tatum would be clearly the best player, he would have a wing defensive specialist. Wiggins would take some of the defensive pressure off. Poole’s not nearly the defender Jaylen Brown is but he’s got a lot of alpha. … You wouldn’t have that issue about whether it’s a Tatum team or a Brown team.”
Did Game 5 warrant some premature offseason change talk? Most definitely. Should it involve dealing Brown for a former No. 1 overall draft selection who never lived up to his hype and an overrated third wheel? Absolutely not. And to think a swap for Wiggins and Poole somehow solves issues, simultaneously draining its depth and star power, is disingenuous.
Brown and Tatum, while undoubtedly underachieving, are still the backbone of a top-of-the-line East-contending Celtics squad for years to come. Their youth passes have obviously expired, there’s no question about it, but to think the entirety of the last 25% of this past offseason was spent on whether or not trading Brown for Kevin Durant made sense, just to now justify throwing the league’s Sixth Man of the Year into the mix for Wiggins and Poole? Make it make sense.
Now if the goal was to further challenge head coach Joe Mazzulla, who granted loves adversity, then we’d have a conversation.
Since dropping 35 points in the first round against the Atlanta Hawks, Brown has dipped, averaging 23.6 points off 15.4 field goal attempts against Philadelphia — over five fewer shot attempts than in Round 1 (20.3) and the regular season (20.6). Brown himself acknowledged this need to turn it up a notch or as he likes to call it, ‘shift the energy,’ after Boston’s Game 4 loss.
“I guess I got to demand the ball a little more,” Brown said, per NBC Sports Boston. “I thought good things happened when I had it in my hands. I thought our offense was OK. I thought we chipped away, we made big-time shots, we got great looks all game long. We just came up short in the end.”
So while aggression and a much-needed playoff pedigree are fair critiques of a guy who’s played in four conference finals series and 18 playoff series in total, maybe it’s time to pump the brakes and curb the trade machine trigger fingers.
