In Defense of the Jaylen Brown Trade

The Boston Celtics recently made one of the more shocking trades in recent memory, sending Jaylen Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers for Paul George, two first-round picks, and two second-round picks. This is a surprising return for a guy who has been named to the All-NBA 2nd team twice in the last four years and just finished 6th in MVP voting this past season.

When the trade was announced, fans went berserk on social media, voicing their shock that Brad Stevens would make a trade that gives the Celtics such poor value. No one could understand why he’d trade a star wing in the middle of his prime for a 36-year-old wing with serious availability concerns and one of the worst contracts in the NBA.

But what if I told you this trade makes more sense than anyone realizes?

Admittedly, I was surprised that the Celtics traded Brown to the 76ers of all teams, and I was shocked by the return when the deal was first announced. However, there's more to this deal than meets the eye. The more I think about this trade, the more I understand why the Celtics decided to trade their star wing, and the more I like the direction the team is heading in.

Today, we’ll examine why the Celtics ultimately decided to part ways with Brown and why the moves they’ve made this offseason set them up for success in the future.

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Why Did the Celtics Trade Jaylen Brown

To fully understand why the Celtics decided to trade Jaylen Brown, we need to go over his time with the team and break down his skill set. The hard truth is that despite his talent, there are certain weaknesses in his profile that will help us understand why an analytically minded team like the Celtics would want to move on from him.

This is going to sound odd considering the events that recently took place, but Brown’s tenure with the Boston Celtics was a massive success, and that’s probably an understatement. He was a raw prospect coming out of California, but his development in the NBA has been insane, as he blossomed into a skilled two-way wing and had a decorated career before turning 30. He’s made five All-Star teams in the last six seasons, and he helped the Celtics win a championship in 2024, winning the Finals MVP in the process.

This past season, Jaylen Brown took on the most difficult role in his entire NBA career. With Jayson Tatum missing a large chunk of the season recovering from a torn Achilles, Brown saw his usage rate jump from 28.9% in 2024 to 36.2% in 2025. He took on a massive offensive load, leading the league in total field goal attempts and ranking second in usage rate behind Luka Doncic.

As the engine of the Celtics’ offense, Brown put together an excellent scoring season, averaging 28.7 PPG on 57.3% TS%. He was one of just five players with 28 PPG, 55% TS%, 50% 2P%, and 75% FT% this past season.

Here’s some icing on the cake: 36.4% of his shots were unassisted in 2025. This was the lowest mark of his career. This means he took a vast majority of his shots off the dribble, yet his TS% was higher than his career average.

One of the biggest reasons why he was so effective as a scorer this year is that he’s an incredible interior scorer. This season, he shot 69.1% at the rim and 46.7% on short mid-range shots, both very good marks for a wing. This has consistently been a strength of his over the years.

Brown also improved slightly as a passer this year. I’m not saying this solely because he got more assists. When your usage increases as his did this past season, an increase in assists is expected. However, there is evidence that his playmaking ability actually improved. He averaged 13.4 potential assists per 100 possessions, the best mark of his career, and his bad-pass rate remained very low. He also averaged four 3PT assists per 100, the best mark of his career. These are high-value assists, so this is important.

Admittedly, Brown’s playmaking output didn’t increase dramatically, but I think the fact that he didn’t have a higher bad pass rate shows that he wasn’t overwhelmed by his increased offensive load.

With this in mind, it can be confusing why the Celtics decided to trade one of the better scoring wings in the NBA, who can create shots off the dribble and is a solid playmaker. Here’s why I believe they made this decision.

There have been a lot of discussions on social media recently about Brown’s true value because there is a disconnect between his box-score production and accolades and his advanced stats, which attempt to estimate his impact.

For example, since 2020, the year Jaylen Brown made his first All-Star team, the Boston Celtics have outscored opponents by 6.9 points per 100 when Brown was on the floor. That’s great, but when Brown went to the bench, the Celtics’ net rating improved, as they outscored opponents by 9.8 points per 100. This is a -2.9 on/off swing, which is quite bad for a multiple-time all-star.

Unfortunately, this trend was present this season, as the Celtics’ net rating improved by 6.2 points per 100 when Brown was on the bench. This isn’t the end-all, be-all. This data can be noisy because it can be skewed by a team’s rotations, roster quality, and the difficulty of their opponents. However, the Celtics have been a very good team for the last six seasons, so some of these concerns don’t apply.

Considering this trend has existed for a large sample of games, I think it’s fair to say this is a red flag for Brown. This doesn’t mean he is a bad player, just that something was happening under the surface that caused his lineups to underperform the other Celtics lineups.

Unfortunately, there is more damning evidence that his true impact might be worse than you think.

Let’s look at some of his all-in-one metrics. If you’re not familiar with these metrics, they are advanced stats that attempt to estimate how many points players are worth per 100 possessions.

You can find versions of these metrics that attempt to predict future impact based on historical trends, while giving more weight to recent performance. For this, we’ll look at where Brown stacks up in three metrics: Expected Estimated Plus Minus (EPM), Darko Plus Minus (DPM), and Time Decay Regularized Adjusted Plus Minus (Time Decay RAPM).

EPM and DPM utilize lineup and box score data to predict players’ future impact, while Time Decay RAPM uses just lineup data. I prefer metrics that incorporate box score data, but RAPM itself is very useful when properly understood.

Across these three metrics, Jaylen Brown ranks highest in DPM, which is widely regarded as the best publicly available predictive plus-minus metric. Still, he ranks just 35th in this metric. EPM is lower on Brown as he ranks 77th in this metric, and RAPM is very low on Brown, unsurprising considering his on/off splits.

These metrics are not indicative of a top-15 player, which it seems many NBA fans view Brown as. I would not use these metrics alone to say that Brown is not a top 15 player, though. These metrics are important, but we need to understand what's happening under the surface that's influencing these results. I want to know what players do well and what they don't do well. I want specifics.

This raises a very important question: Are there practical reasons Jaylen Brown’s advanced numbers are underwhelming, or is it entirely driven by his lineup data? The answer to this is the key to understanding Brown’s true value, because I would say there are more issues with Brown’s game than just his wonky lineup data.

My biggest issue with Jaylen Brown is that he lacks the skills to be a good off-ball player. He is simply not a good enough shooter off the catch, nor is he a good enough defensive playmaker to be impactful in a lower-usage role.

This past season, he shot 33.6% on catch-and-shoot threes, and he didn’t take many of them. He’s heavily reliant on pull-up shooting from both three and mid-range. He also has a long history of being allergic to making plays on the ball on defense. He has never had a steal rate of 2% or better, and his best block rate has been 1.5%, which he has achieved multiple times. He doesn’t get many stops on defense, and I think that limits how impactful he can be.

To be fair to Brown, he has shown the ability to be a strong point-of-attack defender. From 2023-2024, he was an elite isolation defender per BBall Index, but he didn’t impact the game at that level on defense this past season, and I suspect his increased usage is a big reason why. If you’re the Celtics and you’re considering Brown’s fit with your roster, you have to think about what his usage would look like moving forward and the potential impact that would have on his effectiveness as a defender.

Brown is also a bit underdeveloped as a ball handler and playmaker. He had solid playmaking production in each of the last two seasons, but he doesn’t generate assists as much as you’d expect for how often he handles the ball, and he is very turnover-prone, specifically as a scorer. Last season, he had a scoring turnover rate of 10.3%, a mark that ranked in the 1st percentile. This has consistently been an issue for him over the years. Both of these things lead me to question whether Brown’s ideal role is as an on-ball creator.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the skills to be impactful without high usage. This is a big problem. Brown doesn’t have the high-level skills needed to be an impactful offensive engine, and he also doesn’t have the skills to take on a secondary role on offense. This, combined with his underwhelming defensive playmaking, helps explain why his impact metrics have been low during his time in Boston.

This doesn’t mean that Brown is a bad player. I hope I’ve made it clear that he is a very talented player. Few players can help lead a team to 56 wins in a single season while carrying a usage rate north of 35%.

He just has a unique skill set, and it’s hard to find the perfect role for him where he can have a strong impact on his lineups. In my opinion, he was never going to reach his ceiling in Boston. He needed to go somewhere else, and I think the Celtics finally realized this.

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Why This Trade Actually Makes Sense for the Celtics

Everyone and their mother hates this trade for the Celtics. I can’t count how many tweets I’ve seen from people calling Brad Stevens a moron and saying this is as bad as the Luka Doncic trade.

I get why everyone feels this way. Jaylen Brown received MVP buzz this past season, and the Celtics traded him for a 36-year-old Paul George who’s on one of the worst contracts in the league. On top of this, George’s availability is a massive problem as he’s struggled with injuries over the last couple of years. The optics aren’t great.

Here’s the thing. When George is on the floor, he’s still very good, and he’s a perfect fit for this Celtics roster. He is a very good shooter who defends at a high level on and off the ball and is a good playmaker. He's the only player in the league 6'6 or taller who had a 2.0% STL%, 15% AST%, 36% 3PT%, and 46% 2P% on less than 25% USG% across the last two seasons. His usage rate has decreased late in his career, so he should be able to transition to a low-usage role with little difficulty.

According to DPM, George is estimated to be worth about 1.5 points per 100 possessions, the 59th-best mark in the NBA. That’s about 0.7 points worse than Jaylen Brown. A decent difference, but not astronomical. We’ll see if George can stay healthy next season. If he can, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if plus-minus metrics view him as a more impactful player than Brown, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Celtics lineups perform better with George than with Brown.

George’s skillset is simply a better fit for Boston than Brown’s, and I have some questions about how Brown's skillset fits with the rest of the 76ers' roster.

Now I’m not confident enough to flat-out predict that the Celtics will be better without Brown. George's health concerns are serious, and losing a guy who can score off the dribble in the playoffs is a big deal. However, I truly believe there is a chance that they improve on a per-possession basis with George. I also still view the Celtics as one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference, and I expect them to be a top-three seed.

Getting George also provides the Celtics with financial flexibility for the future. George’s contract is big, and he’ll likely be on the roster until 2028, but the Celtics can get rid of his contract in two years. With Brown, they would’ve paid him for at least one more season than they will with George. Keep in mind that this means George will become a massive expiring contract in 2027. At that point, the Celtics could trade him as part of a package for a huge star, since his contract is big enough to match salaries.

This trade doesn’t provide cap relief right away, but it does give the Celtics more financial flexibility in the future.

Now let’s talk about the picks that were involved in this trade. On top of Paul George, the Celtics are also getting a 2028 first-round pick and a 2031 first-round pick. The 2028 first includes a lot of pick-swapping options that could help the Celtics get the most favorable pick possible. Here is a tweet from Keith Smith breaking down the different swapping options applied to this pick.

The 2031 first-round pick may seem unimportant on the surface, but it could be good as well. It’s unprotected, and the 76ers currently don’t have their stars under contract for that season. If things go sideways for the 76ers between now and then, the Celtics could benefit greatly from this pick.

Once again, I understand why people look at this trade and feel like the Celtics got fleeced, but I think this deal actually makes sense for the Celtics once you understand that NBA teams do not value Jaylen Brown as the media and fans do. It's fair to ask why the Celtics didn't wait to trade Brown if this was the best they could get for him, but based on what we know, I assume he was going to request a trade very soon, and perhaps this player-team relationship was too damaged to repair.

Don't ask me why the Celtics didn't do whatever it takes to get Giannis, though. I don't think I will ever understand that.