JJ Redick Reacts To Jaylen Brown’s Supermax Celtics Contract

Jaylen Brown publicly signed the NBA’s richest contract Wednesday, a five-year, $304 million supermax, and the deal has received many reactions including that of ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith and former guard turned analyst JJ Redick.

An ESPN analyst alongside Smith, Redick also co-hosts a podcast with Tommy Alter where he spoke on Brown’s massive Celtics contract.

“There’s two questions here, right? Does Jaylen Brown deserve to get more money than (Nikola) Jokic or Giannis (Antetokounmpo) or Steph (Curry) or LeBron (James) right in salary? The answer to that is no,” Redick said on “The Old Man & The Three” podcast. “Did the Celtics have to re-sign him or sign this extension for the supermax? The answer to that is yes. They’re trying to win a championship. They are best positioned to not allow Jaylen Brown to go into free agency. So the answer is yes, both can be true, right?”

Redick also noted two of the “biggest free agents over this generation” in James (2010) and Durant (2016). He went on to say they had no intentions of signing a supermax and were both leaving the teams that drafted them, so they were “lost for nothing” when they hit free agency.

“And I think in some cases the intention was to keep the Kevin Durants of the world. The intention was to keep the LeBron James’ of the world. The Nikola Jokic’s. The Giannis’. The Steph’s. These guys keep the homegrown talent. Keep the top-five, top-10 players.”

Redick went on to discuss the Celtics guard specifically, noting that Brown isn’t on the same level as some of the previously mentioned players.

“But because of the mechanism with All-NBA and Defensive Player of the Year and all that, MVP, whatever have you, you have guys like Rudy Gobert signing for the supermax. You have guys like Bradley Beal, Jaylen Brown,” Redick said.

“These are fantastic players, deserving All-NBA guys, deserving All-Stars. I’m not saying that, but they’re in a different tier than LeBron James, Steph Curry, Nikola Jokic. So in some ways, the intention was to keep a certain type of player, right? The top five needle movers.

“But because of the qualifications, we’re now in a situation where Jaylen Brown just signed the largest contract extension in NBA history. So I think the intention of the deal has not panned out to the reality of the way the supermax works.”

It seems as though Redick sees the deal as necessary for the Celtics as they pursue a championship, having come close in recent years but doesn’t believe Brown should be making more than some of the other aforementioned NBA stars.