Boston Celtics 'All-In' and 'Have a Real Shot' at Giannis Antetokounmpo. What Changed?

The Boston Celtics have emerged as a serious contender to land Giannis Antetokounmpo before Tuesday’s NBA draft, with two highly respected NBA insiders changing their tunes on how this could go.

“I was really skeptical that the Boston Celtics were going to go all-in on this, but from what I understand, they have,” ESPN’s Brian Windhorst said on Get Up. Windhorst was a key player in throwing cold water on this rumor over the past week.

Marc Stein, on his substack, wrote in a 3:15 AM addendum to a trade rumor column, “One league source, after this story was published, told The Stein Line that the Celtics managed to emerge from the weekend ‘with a real shot’ to win this race with a Jaylen Brown-centric offer, adding that Milwaukee has considered going ahead with a Boston swap even without a third-team facilitator.”

The momentum for an Antetokounmpo trade to the Celtics appeared to have cooled, lending real credence to the notion that the Bucks were leveraging Boston’s involvement to entice the Heat to go all in with their best and final offer. That might still be true, but the Celtics are now apparently forcing Milwaukee’s hand.

So what changed?

“They were very cautious about putting Jaylen Brown in an official, firm offer,” Windhorst said. “I believe they have. Jaylen Brown is on the table and Jaylen Brown could be traded for Giannis Antetokounmpo in the short-term future.”

The plausible deniability has now disappeared for Boston. Once that happens with a player like Brown, who has bristled at trade rumors in the past, the pivot is to go all-in.

The other interesting change is Milwaukee’s willingness to just deal with Boston.

“Whichever deal occurs, whether it’s today or tomorrow, it’s going to be a one-to-one deal,” ESPN insider Shams Charania said on Get Up. “It’s going to consist of Milwaukee and likely one of these two teams. There's no third team, fourth team in any construct right now.”

The door was left open for teams to get in on the deal over the summer, but if it involves draft picks this year, it would likely have to get done and executed quickly.

The most interesting development in this will be to see what Boston decides to trade if this deal gets done. The Celtics value Brown very highly, and have been hesitant to include much more in terms of a sweetener. Brown is an All-NBA caliber player who has proven he can lead a team past expectations. However, Antetokounmpo is a two-time MVP, which is a level no current Celtic has come close to reaching.

If the Celtics package feels expensive, it’ll be because they crossed the rubicon with the Brown rumors and the leverage flipped to the Bucks side. Adding multiple picks and a young player like Hugo Gonzalez, who was mentioned by Stein, would mean that Boston knew there was no coming back from these discussions once it was clear Brown was involved.

If the Celtics package is simply Brown and maybe a pick or two, it will mean that the Bucks pivoted to a more palatable win-now scenario. Even if they strip away some of the pieces and begin a rebuild around Brown, just having him on the team will mean they won’t bottom out.

It would be fair to ask if the new lottery reform changed how Milwaukee viewed the ripple effect of this deal. Now that the bottom three teams have reduced lottery odds, being mediocre but competitive is a little better than just being bad. The Bucks have operated like a team that wants a lot of picks, but where they were comfortable getting those picks might have changed.

Finally, it’s also fair to wonder if the Celtics, by apparently including Brown in this negotiation, will have to trade him regardless of the result. If the Bucks decide to go with the Miami offer, which seemed to be a done deal over the weekend, has Boston then essentially lost Brown in the pursuit of Antetokounmpo? Will they have gone too far?

Either way, the deal is expected to be finalized by tomorrow night’s draft, so we’ll finally get a resolution, at least to this part of the offseason, very soon. It's important to understand, though, that no matter what the resolution is, Stevens will have a lot of work left to do. Just getting Antetokounmpo wouldn’t be the end of the work, it would be the beginning.

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