Brad Stevens said Monday that the Boston Celtics traded Jaylen Brown to keep the team competitive, add more optionality with draft assets, and because the path moving forward had become "more challenging."
Stevens, the Celtics' president of basketball operations, and team owner Bill Chisholm met with the media in Boston to explain the difficult decision to trade Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers for Paul George, two first-round picks (2028 and 2031) and two second-round picks (2028 and 2030).
"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 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," Stevens 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 [Brown and Jayson Tatum].
"The reality in this day and age at the NBA, and you could see it obviously with the last couple of champions... you have 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."