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Brad Stevens reveals why Celtics made stunning Jaylen Brown trade now
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- Brad Stevens reveals why Celtics made stunning Jaylen Brown trade now
BOSTON — Brad Stevens insisted on Monday that the Celtics still had a path to reconciliation with Jaylen Brown after shopping the All-Star in trade rumors for much of the past month. However, that fact did not keep the team from including Brown in a deal with the 76ers that became official on Monday. Boston received a meager return for the 10-year veteran in the swap, acquiring Paul George, two first-round picks and two second-round picks from the 76ers.
When pressed about the urgency that Boston approached the deal in the last week, Stevens tried to explain Boston's rationale in making the deal now rather than waiting on a better offer.
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"I don't know that you can perfectly predict the timing of these things," Stevens said. "Obviously this was not a secret. So people had plenty of information or at least had a reason to make offers, make a run, whatever the case may be. The one thing that I will say is we tried our very best to look and again assess not necessarily… we tried to really assess the value of what we thought a pick was worth or at least best predicted."
Stevens also pointed back to the team's financial commitment to Brown and Jayson Tatum on supermax contracts as an impetus for pulling the trigger.
"It is an interesting time," Stevens said. "The new CBA coincided with seven years after the supermaxes were instituted. We may not be sitting here if there was a rule in the CBA that said the guys that you drafted that you sign to 35% supermaxes count as 25% cap, because then that would allow you to build out towards the aprons with a lot less flexibility or with a lot more flexibility. But the reality is that those are hard to build.
"And you can look back on, and again, I don't want to just throw a bunch of numbers, but 47% of the cap is what those two guys were when we won it all. And that's just going up and up and that's tough."
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With the addition of George in place of Brown on next year's roster, the Celtics now enter next season with $201 million committed in payroll to 15 players.
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