Celtics trade Jaylen Brown to 76ers for Paul George, picks

Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens and team governor Bill Chisholm met with reporters on Monday to discuss their controversial decision to trade Jaylen Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers.

Stevens pointed to the NBA's collective bargaining agreement as justification for the move.

"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 also looked 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," he 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."

"The reality in this era and in this day and age in the NBA, and you could see it obviously with the last couple of champions … you have to do a great job, and you have to have the optionality 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."

Those comments speak to a larger problem hanging over the NBA.

The Wrath of the Second Apron

At his end-of-season press conference in mid-May, Stevens hinted that bigger changes could be coming to the Celtics' roster after their first-round knockout at the hands of the same Sixers they would later trade Brown to.

"We've been to six Eastern Conference Finals, a couple Finals in the last few years," Stevens said at the time. "We've won one. And when you get beat in the first round, you're not there."

Once the Celtics dangled Brown in trade talks for Giannis Antetokounmpo this offseason, their relationship appeared beyond repair. Still, that did not stop the shock around the league at the package the Celtics ultimately accepted: Paul George, two first-round picks, and two second-round picks.

"I mean, the guy got traded for less than Walker Kessler," one general manager told ESPN's Tim MacMahon. "That's baffling to me."

(The Los Angeles Lakers traded two first-round picks and two second-round picks to sign-and-trade for Kessler, meaning the Jazz did not have to absorb a bloated contract like George's.)

However, another general manager pointed to the size of Brown's contract—roughly 35% of the salary cap for each of the next three years—and how the NBA's new financial era could punish a team for building around that deal.

"It's really hard to tie up that much of your salary cap in one player unless they're truly generational," the GM told MacMahon. "And he's not even close to that. If you supermax Shai [Gilgeous-Alexander] or [Nikola Jokić], it makes sense. That's probably the list. The league is getting smarter now."

If the Celtics had an otherwise balanced salary sheet, they might not have had to move on from Brown so soon. But with Jayson Tatum also consuming roughly 35% of the salary cap each year, it became increasingly difficult for the Celtics to make major roster changes without moving one of them.

"My general feeling watching us play in really each of the last two playoffs — the second round against New York, even against Orlando in the first round (last season) — was we had a hard time generating really good looks on that first shot," Stevens said at his end-of-season press conference. "So we've got to figure out a way to do better in that, and I think that one of the things that we've got to figure out is how to have more of an impact at the rim."