Few leaders in professional sports have more patience at the podium than Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens. Stevens is typically verbose, fields more questions than is necessary, and goes into more depth than is required (while also being impressively articulate).<\/p>\n
But, on Tuesday night, just moments after the Celtics selected Houston forward Chris Cenac Jr. with the No. 27 overall pick in the NBA draft, Stevens (unsurprisingly) sidestepped questions far more than he typically does.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because the majority of the questions Stevens was asked late Tuesday night did not center around the team\u2019s draft selection \u2014 they centered around the future of Jaylen Brown, the Celtics 2024 Finals MVP and five-time All-Star who just so happens to be coming off the best season of his career, only to find himself embroiled in (seemingly very legitimate) trade rumors.<\/p>\n
ESPN insider Shams Charania reported on Tuesday night that Brown was explicitly offered by the Celtics in a proposed trade for Giannis Antetokounmpo (who, if you haven\u2019t heard, instead landed in Miami).<\/p>\n
The entire unfolding of the saga begged the question: with Antetokounmpo headed elsewhere, where does the Celtics\u2019 relationship with Brown stand now? Do the Celtics want to bring him back? Does he even want to return?<\/p>\n
Last month, on his Twitch stream, Brown said if it were up to him, he\u2019d spend the next 10 years in Boston.<\/p>\n
In the wake of these trade rumors, has that changed? <\/p>\n
We didn\u2019t get a clear-cut answer about Brown\u2019s future in Boston, nor did Stevens disclose how close the Celtics actually got to pulling the trigger on the trade.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to talk about those types of things, right?\u201d he said in response to the first question of the press conference, which centered around the Giannis trade.<\/p>\n
But, we did learn a few concerete things about the nature of the situation.<\/p>\n
Brad Stevens and Jaylen Brown have been in regular touch <\/p>\n
Brad Stevens was willing to divulge more information about the nature of his communications with Brown, which seemed to imply that Brown was probably not blindsided when the reports of a potential trade first surfaced.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a couple of meetings earlier [at the] end of May, also before he went back overseas a couple of days ago, 10 days ago or so,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cSpent a lot of time just the two of us sitting down together, and then have been, like every offseason, in regular touch with his agent all the way through the last couple of days. Obviously, with all the rumor mill and all that stuff, and his name being splashed all over the place, that\u2019s not easy – but we certainly wanted to be as proactive and upfront with that as possible, and I thought we had really good, candid conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Brown, for those curious, is represented by agent Jason Glushon, who also represents teammate Sam Hauser (and former Celtics Al Horford and Jrue Holiday).<\/p>\n
The fact there has been a steady flow of conversations is a good sign in the sense that if the hope is to mend the a relationship, at the very least, Brown wasn\u2019t completely blindsided.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just try to be as upfront as possible and as candid as possible at the beginning, long before any of any talks begin,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cOur guys understand that being here and being in the limelight, they\u2019re going to have a lot of attention on them regardless, and then they also understand that there are things that are exaggerated at this time of the year, and then there are things that are real.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the same time, Brad Stevens did not provide assurance that Brown would return to Boston<\/p>\n
Stevens was plainly asked: Is Jaylen Brown going to be a Celtic next season?<\/p>\n
\u201cJaylen Brown is a big part of this \u2014 I\u2019m never gonna predict the future, but like every indication, everything that I think about over the past few year has been building around those guys, right?\u201d Stevens said. \u201cAnd so obviously, you never know, but at the same time, the one thing I want to make very clear is how valued he\u2019s always been. He\u2019s been amazing, he\u2019s been an amazing teammate, great person to be around, and whether that run ends 10 years from now when he retires, or before, there\u2019s a lot to celebrate. We have a great relationship and an open relationship where we talk about everything, but I don\u2019t want to predict the future. I look at it as \u2018This is our team.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve re-listened to this answer multiple times, and I\u2019m still not entirely sure what to make of it. On one hand, Stevens says that over the last few years, he\u2019s looked at everything through the lense of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, and he praises Brown as a teammate and their relationship. At the same time, he didn\u2019t offer any assurance that the current plan is for Brown to be on the roster next year, and he had a very clear opportunity to do so.<\/p>\n
Stevens was also asked whether he believes that the recent trade rumors have impacted the franchise\u2019s relationship with Brown, and declined to answer. He did note, on several occasions that completely understands that it\u2019s hard to be in trade rumors.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou would have to ask him,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cI mean, it\u2019s not fun, and I\u2019m empathetic towards that. It\u2019s not fun to be through that, and at the same time, I think my job is to be as candid and upfront as possible prior to, and have tried to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stevens also acknowledged that the team prefers things don\u2019t become as public as they have in recent days.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs you know, we try to keep things as close to the vest and quiet as possible, and at the same time, knowing that the rumor mills is the rumor mill, and there\u2019s going to be a lot of noise out there, that\u2019s why you meet and be upfront as possible,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cBut listen, I can\u2019t say enough good things about Jaylen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Where do things go from here? It\u2019s possible that Brown is traded in the days ahead, providing clarity on the team\u2019s next steps. It\u2019s also possible that Brown goes live on Twitch and discusses his thoughts on the situation, which could also provide some clarity.<\/p>\n
One thing is for certain: Stevens\u2019 late-night press conference raised more questions than it answered. Only time will tell what the future holds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Few leaders in professional sports have more patience at the podium than Celtics president of basketball operations Brad…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":769171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3766],"tags":[7,45,75,3798,46,21388,6],"class_list":["post-769170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boston-celtics","tag-basketball","tag-boston","tag-boston-celtics","tag-bostonceltics","tag-celtics","tag-celtics-news","tag-nba"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116804093429230527","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/769171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}