The Market Is Speaking, and It's Telling The Celtics and Jaylen Brown To Reconcile

Business is getting done quickly in the NBA right now. As I type this, the Toronto Raptors and LA Clippers have agreed to a deal to send Kawhi Leonard back to the Raptors for Brandon Ingram, Grady Dick, and five draft picks.

BREAKING: The Los Angeles Clippers are nearing deal sending Kawhi Leonard to the Toronto Raptors for Brandon Ingram, Gradey Dick, 2 first-round picks, 1 pick swap and 2 second-rounders, sources tell ESPN. A return to Canada for the Raptors champion and two-time Finals MVP. pic.twitter.com/VovqGw5qS6
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) June 30, 2026

This is, according to Spotrac’s Keith Smith, the 23rd agreed to or fully executed trade of this offseason.

The Kawhi Leonard trade is already the 23rd agreed-to or executed trade of the 2026 offseason.
— Keith Smith (@KeithSmithNBA) June 30, 2026

None of them has included the Boston Celtics.

According to the Athletic’s Sam Amick, the market for Brown is underwhelming for Boston, with teams believed to be suitors either signaling otherwise or moving on to other deals.

The Portland Trail Blazers, for example, just acquired Ja Morant, and the reporting after the move has suggested that they are now out of the Brown sweepstakes. Denver has been mentioned in rumors, but “their interest has been significantly overstated.”

Somehow, a second-team All-NBA player coming off his finest season as a pro and who is under contract for three more seasons is not valuable to the rest of the league. Whether it’s analytics departments overblowing some of the numbers, the CBA wreaking havoc with the financial system, or a leaguewide negotiating effort to depress his value, a player who should be at the peak of his value is somehow impossible to move for anything significant.

Little has made sense this offseason, which lends some credence to the CBA angle of things. We’ve known from the beginning that this agreement, which was partly negotiated by then Celtics governor and current minority owner Wyc Grousbeck, would tear the Celtics down.

“It was very purposeful and intentional to keep building the parity in the league,” he explained last offseason. “I foreshadowed this … that you go up two years, maybe at most three and then you got to come back down. My prediction was you are going to see that for the next 40 years. As long as these rules are in the league, teams are going to pop up as best they can and then they are going to be strangled on purpose.”

The system isn’t designed to keep a team like Boston afloat, so in many ways, it’s kind of working the way it’s supposed to. Boston is scrambling to keep itself under a destructively punitive repeater tax in order to reset it, and the Brown trade efforts could certainly be part of that plan.

But the Celtics still have paths to stay under the tax line with Brown on the roster. And considering how much of a step back they might take by taking a lesser deal, it’s looking like a reconciliation is the best path forward for Boston and Brown.

Bill Simmons, who has been in the front car for this whole roller coaster, has come around on the idea, which might be a signal that the too much is drying up too quickly for Boston to realize full value in a Brown trade.

This Jaylen situation can be fixed with one 3-hour dinner in the private room at Toscano’s - table for 6, the Jays, Joe Mazz, Stevens, Chisholm and Wyc. The right trade isn’t there, shit happened, just talk it out without agents, family and extended circle flunkies poisoning it.
— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) June 30, 2026

Brown has remained largely silent about the trade saga itself, but reports of his frustration are getting louder. He’s liking social media posts about his trade, which at least hints at some growing restlessness about the situation. All of this is understandable.

But everyone involved has to take a good, hard look at what’s playing out before them. For whatever reason, the NBA world isn’t lining up to give him the keys to the car. As much as Brown might feel disrespected in Boston, at least they're valuing him higher than the rest of the league. Things can certainly change, but he has to ask himself where he’d rather be: A team that valued him close enough to a two-time MVP that they barely threw in additional assets in trade talks, or a team offering scraps tied to a bad contract?

Some might think the trade process is easy in a situation like this; that Boston tried to get Giannis Antetokounmpo and failed and then scoured the market to find nothing, so they’ll just keep Brown and move on. But from Brown’s perspective, it feels more like watching your wife download Bumble and start swiping. Even if nothing happens, going through those motions hurts.

Maybe things aren’t as bad as they seem and coming back is, in fact, not very difficult at all. Or maybe we’re past the point of no return and Stevens has to cope with the first massive fumble of his executive career.

The rumors don’t paint a great picture, but as they continue to flow, reconciliation might make the most sense for both sides. The Celtics still do value Brown, and clearly value him more than most teams. If there's any hope of getting past this, now’s the time to start that process.

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