Why Jaylen Brown returning to the Boston Celtics might not be much of a problem

Wednesday 7/1/26

Was at the barber shop yesterday and talk centered on Jaylen Brown and the Celtics and how the Celtics "blew it" by not moving him after getting as close as they did. I don't partake in these discussions because I don't fit into them. The language is mangled, there's a lot of ass talking--as in, people saying things straight from their ass. Real common man stuff, with "g's" left off the ends of words, etc.

It isn't a space for me, like all spaces, with who I am and how I'm able to think and what I know and how I speak. The subject can be anything. The Beatles on some social media platform, or the things people say about history in the Bunker Hill Monument or F. Scott Fitzgerald. So I just sat in one of the chairs and listened.

The consensus was that Brown can never return to the Celtics now that they've shown how little they want him and so forth. First of all, I don't know how close they were to trading him. They tried to. But they also could have gone in with the mindset of taking a shot and seeing if they were dazzled. I believe the Celtics could be in a good spot here with Brown. What? That's crazy talk! Is it?

Giannis was a big risk to me. I don't think that would have worked out. He's older, injury prone, and he expects to be treated like royalty and isn't a good teammate and professional. Too much of a Wild Card factor for a superstar and too much entitlement and too many games likely not to be played. And you had no idea how well he would or wouldn't have worked with Jayson Tatum.

Here's the key point with Brown. I wrote this a little while ago here, and I'll say it again: He's happy being unhappy. It's what he likes. A controlled form of feeling unhappy, which I suppose is different than actually being unhappy. But he likes to be able to feel aggrieved. That's his sweet spot. He also likes his teammates. Again, it's not real, "O woe, how I am suffering" unhappiness, because he's hanging out with his buddies and he can act like he's disrespected. That's what Jaylen Brown really wants. If there was none of that, he'd have to invent it so he could be happier by being unhappy.

The barber shop talk covered other teams in the East before touching on the West, like the latter was this conference full of juggernauts and all these players of enormous, almost mythical size. None of this is outsized cause for concern.

Wemby isn't that good, as we've discussed. The Thunder could be done. Is Denver really going to win again? Sure, someone has to emerge and come out of the conference, but someone winning because someone has to, basically, and someone winning because they're so formidable, are two different things. There's a lot of "they won because someone had to" happening in the NBA right now and in sports generally. It's the result of analytics, which does away with creativity and individuality. The result is a bunch of teams that are the same. This is different than parity.

The Celtics can actually reset, reconnect. They know what they have. Maybe Derrick White can return to form offensively and shoot better. These other teams, meanwhile, have guys who need to adjust to each other, learn to play together. You don't know how it's going to go. It wouldn't shock me to see the Celtics be successful and the story at the end to be how they almost moved on from Brown and now look at them. (You see this kind of narrative quite a bit in sports history. Wouldn't be new.) Do I expect that? How can you expect anything in this league with what I just said?

Or maybe he still gets moved. I don't know to whom that might be, though. My concern is Tatum. He strikes me as sneaky. Soft people are often sneaky people. They try to orchestrate things behind the backs of others. He could want Brown out of the way for the benefit of his own platform and legacy. The latter is something these guys try and control now. It's by design and manipulation. Inorganic.

Look at Giannis. He got what the brand needed, then he was done pursuing championships with zeal and commitment. He wanted to chill with is brothers, show up when he preferred to show up, stat pad, take nights off. Now he'll be in Miami rather than Milwaukee, and I'm sure he'll want to have a good time.

The modern NBA superstar wants to win MVP for legacy purposes. And sneaker deals. Guys want one championship. They often don't care about winning again. They want the one championship for the brand and legacy, so that "champion" and "has a ring" can go next to their name, and then they want to be comfortable, have things how they like them, fat cat it up, and get whatever they don't have for their legacy, which for Tatum would be an MVP, and I could totally see him thinking he can't get that with Brown on the team. I'm sure he thinks he's better than Brown, but he knows Brown is tougher and more clutch. Or, if not more clutch, has bigger balls.

He also knows that Brown is going to get his points and if six or so of those points were Tatum's every night, he could win MVP. The thing is that Tatum is not an MVP caliber player. Beside ignorance being the general state of just about everyone, I don't know why people don't understand this, how they can't see it. He's not the most elite of the elite. He isn't a leader in even the "I'm the best player, this team goes as I go" sense, and, to be fair to Jaylen Brown, he was that last year for the Celtics, despite his flaws.

The biggest issue I see with Brown's return would be Tatum rather than Brown. I think Tatum is fine with him personally. They seem to have a good relationship. If I had to guess, I'd say that they're more brothers than friends--you know, that sibling you're not really close with, but you like them well enough and you have a bond. They aren't your first choice to hang out with because you're different or whatever (I can see Tatum, who strikes me as weak, thinking Brown is too intense, isn't "chill," which is something weak people present as a virtue, but it's really how they try and disguise the truth that they'd rather not deal with hard things if they don't have to, and also how it's always something with Brown, some drama, which, again, I think Brown likes and maybe needs as he's currently constituted, which suggest a need for some re-constituting, but people very rarely change at any time in their lives, let alone right here, right now, because that would be better), but you have no problem going over to their place and hanging out for a few hours on a holiday and it's honestly a decent enough time and you care about them.

Caring about someone in the NBA way doesn't mean you wouldn't tell the front office that you'd prefer that person to be gone and if they want to keep you later on it's better to make that happen, but I suspect in terms of their personal interactions and their on-court interactions that it'd be the usual for Tatum and Brown.

I realize that I'm just about the only person who thinks Brown could return, but people rarely think at all and if they did or could and also were able to capably observe you'd have more of them leaning in this same direction. It would be a big mistake for the Celtics to trade this player mainly because they believe they have to now because of his personal feelings.