Rachel Nichols Debunks The Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum Celtics Drama | Open Floor

What was your takeaway from listening to the Celtics' explanation for why they dealt Jalen Brown?

First of all, I'm gonna give the reporter props to Boston ownership front office.

They, they did not have to sit in front of the media.

There was no like, there was no like mandate that they explain themselves.

Not only did they, I believe.

Leave people in the room, you can vouch for this.

Say that basically until the questions got so repetitive that, you know, it was just basically it wasn't even that like I mean that people were just done asking questions to the credit of the Celtics, uh, Christian Magliola, their PR guy, they looked around the room for any questions.

A couple of people, I think, got, uh, two bites at the apple.

So yeah, they.

That wasn't exactly a talk till you dropped one, but they talked until that was a big deal, and, and Christian runs such a good shop over there, and I, no question about Mike Conley or anything like that, just strictly Jalen Brown talk.

I just, I just want to point that out.

I thought that was really good and good for the fans again, obviously like you've got a lot of Boston fans upset, so.

Helps to hear what they're thinking.

They did a lot of defense in that press conference, um, but I appreciate them giving it.

Look, I, here's what I think.

I think that the Celtics clearly had an idea about what was going to happen over the course of the next season.

That the rest of us could not have as clear a picture on and it could be the correct idea or it could maybe if they didn't trade him would not have borne out that way and they would have been like, oh thank God we didn't trade him.

But what seems clear to me is that they thought was what was gonna happen.

Happened this coming season was going to be bad for their ball club and that is why they had to make this deal.

Uh, the timing still, I feel maybe they could have figured they could have had this Philly offer would have held a little bit longer, but, um, I think that.

They clear, what is clear to me from the outside is that whether it was the usage issue, because obviously, Jayson Tatum has held the usage crown on that team even through all the years of which Jason, which Jay, which Jalen until this past season, whether it's, hey, Drew Hanlon, Jason Tatum's longtime trader and trainer and very close friend, pointing out like, oh, when Jayson Tatum's usage is over 33% or whatever he said it was, the Celtics win.

Obviously for that to happen, I believe when Jayson Tatum came back this past season, it was 31%, um, and Jalen Brown's was 34% and that obviously if it's gonna switch is going to upset Jalen Brown.

The, the conversation in the public between Jalen Brown and sort of what he was saying out in the world to NBA, you know, analysts and, and what he was saying about Celtics stuff, I think was heating up to a point where they feared in the fall this would only get worse, um.

And, you know, Jalen Brown said it years ago.

I think I saw an old quote from him where he was saying, look, the problem that happens between teams and players is when the player thinks he has one value and the team thinks his value is different.

And that value can be financial, that value can be usage, that value can be sort of whose team is it kind of situation.

And he obviously thought, and by the way, we don't know if he's wrong yet, he thought, my value to this team is higher than they think it is, and that was a point of real frustration.

For him to the point where he said a lot of things, um, we've heard recent days that the Tatum influence, you know, I think people, I think this is a little bit about people need something to write about.

I don't really feel that Jason Tatum, did Jason, I, I don't buy that Jason Tatum stormed into Brad Stevens and said this guy must be traded, which is a little bit of what's been happening in the media news cycle.

There are a couple of things , yeah, and, and there are a couple of things that, that popped for me on both ends of the spectrum.

You had.

Uh, on ESPN I think Sham's kind of kicked this thing off by saying that the two, the two relationship between Jalen and Jason had deteriorated a lot over the last couple of years.

Um, and then you had, I think Tatum's been doing some kind of media tour.

He has a book, so he's doing book signings.

He's doing book signings.

He was on children's book , very sweet.

Great, awesome.

Hope people buy it.

Um, he was on, I think, the Today Show, one of the hours on the Today Show.

I don't know who the hosts are for this.

I don't care about this stuff, but one of the hosts did something that drives me crazy.

She said something to the effect of like, now people are trying to say you two guys weren't friends.

Like, stop.

Both, both tactic.

Just stop this like.

Just, I was just annoying.

I saw the clip twice on my timeline.

Just stop, stop doing that.

Um.

Tatum and Brown, I've said this, I've written it, I've seen it.

I've been covered this team a lot over the last decade.

They've never been best friends.

They are very different people.

Jalen Brown is the guy that over All-Star Weekend hosts a like listening session in Beverly Hills.

Jalen Brown is the guy that goes on marches in Georgia.

Jayson Tatum is just different.

He is a young.

Guy.

He's just a young guy being a young guy.

Not to say he doesn't believe in things, but he doesn't, uh, he isn't as passionate about them, at least not publicly as Jalen Brown is.

I have never got the sense that they don't like each other.

I have never got the sense that there is personal friction between them, um.

It, I, I don't, I fundamentally don't believe that so much has changed between them over the last couple of years that it made this relationship so toxic.

That it couldn't continue.

Now, the relationship between Jalen Brown and the Celtics had toxicified a lot over the last week, right?

Like Jalen Brown, I'm sure can live with his name being floated in a Giannis rumor.

I'm sure that Brad Stevens, when he met with him in early June, said, hey, Giannis is out there.

We might make a run at him.

And I'm sure this was expressed to Jalen Brown.

What was probably not expressed to Jalen Brown is that in the aftermath of that type of deal falling through, that he would hear his name connected to every team.

In the NBA that he would just Jalen Brown for this, Jalen Brown for that, all that.

I think that, that is what toxified the situation in Boston much more than any kind of dynamic, problematic dynamic between Tatum and Brown.

But that again.

To exactly what I was saying that that tells me the fact that they would attach him to any, you know, roving plant out there is that they feared what was going to happen this fall, winter, whenever the breaking point might have been, was going to be so significantly bad for their basketball team.

That it was worth dealing him, not at any cost, but at almost any cost.

And I don't know.

We'll, we'll never know.

We'll never know if they were right or not because it's not gonna happen.

So we don't know.

I didn't like the people, you know, sort of implying that Jayson Tatum stormed into a room and demanded that they trade, uh, Jalen Brown.

I don't think that happened.

It would be extremely out of character for the Jason Tatum that I know.

Um, and I agree with you.

I don't think anything has been so toxic between the two of them.

I haven't talked to Jason about this.

I do wonder because I can think if it was me to hear repeated times from Jalen Brown, this is my favorite season.

It's my favorite season of basketball I've ever played.

And I think even if you're Tatum, you can understand like, yeah, it's good to be the lead guy and it's fun to like get to score sort of at will and, and always be the one who can have the ball.

I get , I, if I'm Jason Tatum, Jason Tatum would have enjoyed it just as much as Jalen Brown 100%, but saying it over and over again.

I think on a personal level, when you are kind of putting that above, not just a championship for yourself, but a championship season where I, I was, you and I were both in the locker room after the Celtics won that title.

We're brothers.

This is, you know, all the, all the.

Stuff that it takes the cohesiveness, the group that it takes to win a title, that that feeling of camaraderie, that feeling of being family and like all this stuff, you are throwing that away too, and you're doing it in a year that I have to imagine was the most difficult year of Jayson Tatum's life.

That rehabbing from that injury is awful.

I think we gloss over it now a little bit because guys keep now coming back from it.

It used to be a career ender and not that long ago.

It is a horrible rehab and the fact that he did it so quickly just tells you how much work he put in .

It is.

Lonely, it is depressing.

You do the, you know, progress comes and fits and starts, and you can go backward.

It is really awful to go through, and I just think that hearing over and over again, this is my favorite year because in essence, the, the, the dot dot dot is because he's not here, um.

Again, I haven't talked to Jason about it.

I don't think it would have made them unable to work together this coming year, but I, the only Jason Tatum angle I can have on this is if I were Jason Tatum, that would not have been so fun for me.

That's all.

I, I would agree.

I, I do one more thing.

I hated the, oh, he thinks he's the smartest guy in the room, unnamed anonymous quote.

I hated that.

What is wrong with being smart?

Jalen Brown, all of us say all the time he's one of the smartest guys in the NBA.

He, he puts it out there and shows you.

He does the work on it.

He's been to like 6 college programs while he's been playing.

This is something that is important to him to be intellectually curious.

I, I, I hate.

has been right.

I hate it.

Chris Paul, he was in so and so this past weekend doing an event, right, fulfilling obligations, by the way, charitably and in terms of doing the right thing by a lot of people cannot be undersold.

He might be the best at it in the NBA.

Yeah, like, so that whole quote about, oh, I, I, I, that really upset me and I don't wanna hear it.

Thank you.

I look.

And, and I talked about this on Monday and I still feel the same way as we record today.

Um, I think the Celtics moved him for two reasons.

I do think the finances played a role in it.

I think when you have two guys love the word optionality, Brad Stevens, 18 times that word was used.

I knew it was a lot.

I realized it was 18 times.

That's amazing.

Um, some by the media is throwing the word back at him, but I think double digit times by Brad Stevens.

Um, I think they did it for some financial reasons.

When you have two guys on a supermax, it's tough to build a team, and they did believe there were some redundancies there, the usage rate stuff.

I believe all that to be true.

I also believed, to your point, that they thought.

That bringing Jalen Brown in after the year that he had, after some of the things that were said would have been challenging.

I, I believe that to be true.

My biggest issue remains why they did this so quickly, why they moved with the speed with which they moved, um.

This was a deal that I'm convinced would have been there 1 month from now, 2 months from now, 3 months from now.

There was no market for Paul George.

Paul George.

And I, I hate to put it this way, but it was widely viewed as a toxic asset.

You would have had to attach draft capital to move Paul George.

OK, so this is, you know much more about this than I do.

How much more draft capital came with Paul George in exchange for Jalen Brown they would have had to go come, have gone with Paul George for dead money or something like that pick.

I'm talking about first rounders, one pick.

I think they essentially got Jalen Brown for a first round, for a first round pick.

That's essentially what it boils down to.

That deal would have been there for, it wasn't a market for Paul.

Like those picks probably would have been there too .

There really wasn't a lot of flexibility that Philadelphia had.

Why they move so fast is still inexplicable to me.

To me, it just feels like they got blinded by the lights a little bit, that they got shook by how public this became.

This is something that Brad Stevens talked about a lot at the press conference, just how visible this was, how loud this had become.

This is not something.

The Celtics are used to dealing with.

Most of their deals are done.

You're like, well, what happened there?

You acquired Christas Porzingis, your deal for Derrick White.

You're doing, like they, they move pretty quickly.

Brad does keep things pretty tight.

Uh, even the trade to the seventy-Sixers, we didn't really list them as an option until it actually happened.

How loud this became, I think rattled the Celtics, and I think it stopped them potentially.

It's a great unknown.

It stopped them potentially from getting something better.

2 months from now, 6 months from now, and their fear of bringing Jalen Brown back, maybe that cost them a chance to get something bigger before the trade deadline of this year.

I, I just think this was.

The least that they could get for a player of this caliber.

Like Paul George was always going to be there.

Always.

A couple of first-rounders, one in 2031, they were going to be there for Jalen Brown.

They settled for what I still feel was the worst offer they could possibly get and take for Jalen Brown.