The Luka Doncic trade was not grounded in analytics. Luka Doncic was 6th in EPM this season and regularly grades out well in most analytics.

The trades are way more different for a myriad of reasons then they are similar. Also saying defensive reasons isn’t analytics.

This man really said Luka was traded due to analytics 😭

Nah. Luka has good analytics any way you slice it. Jaylen does not.

Christ, are people on this sub even trying? There are so many reasons why your take is awful and I’m trying my best to not be an asshole. But it’s really hard right now.

No the difference was that Luka Doncic was a 1A player who just came off leading a team to the finals and Nico Harrison legitimately thought he wasn’t good enough to win a championship so they traded him in for a aging and injury prone Anthony Davis. Boston already has a supermax superstar player and with the new CBA it’s impossible to win a championship around 2 supermax players unless they complement each other very well. Also Mavs didn’t even ask around the league for his value, the Celtics did.

Christ this is stupid.

The JB trade really broke the brains of some dumb people.

no because lukas defensive reputation is way worse than his advaced stats like luka usually ranges from a slight postive to a slight negative on defense

I mean I’m willing to buy that Stevens just wanted rid of Brown because of his personality, but fact is that other teams don’t seem to have valued him particularly highly too. Multiple sources seem to have indicated that many other teams were in talks with Boston re: Brown, and that no one was willing to meet Boston’s very high initial asking price.

So whatever Boston’s motivation was, the rest of the league seems to see Brown / his contract as much worse than a lot of the Celtics fanbase. Some of them were pretending Brown for Giannis should have been a straight up trade, which I just found adorable.

I wish people would stop trying to compare these two trades.

Them being bad trades doesn’t make them similar in any way

Nico Harrison wouldn’t be able to tell you the difference between VORP and RAPTOR.

“Are we supposed to believe brown was really bad analytically.” Bro, the numbers are there. There is nothing to “believe.” Facts are facts.

JB has terrible analytics for his contract. That’s why it’s blown out of proportion. The Celtics got a terrible return. That’s the real issue. Getting off JBs contract would have been smart with a better deal. Luka is so much better than JB analytically and eye test. It’s not even close.

Jaylen objectively has bad analytics. The team offensive rating is nearly identical with him on vs off the court and the team defensive rating gets worse with him on the court. He is an average efficiency high volume scorer with little playmaking ability and high turnovers. He is a good on ball defender when engaged, but his offball defense is some of the worst in the league. He also doesnt rebound all that well for a player his size and athletisicm. Watching every celtics game this season, he had the worst closeouts, screen navigation and help defense of any player on the court by far.

i’m not sure how you’re trying to make an equivalence here. jaylen brown grades out poorly in every advanced stat possible and has inflated usage last season that carried his production. on both offense and defense despite seeming like he would be a positive on the defensive end of the ball. luka doncic has graded extremely well on the offensive side of the ball, yes he’s a negative defender, but overall still grades out as one of the most impactful players in the nba. doncic has also solo carried his teams in the playoffs where a jaylen brown led team got owned in the first round by the sixers.

legitimately one of the worst takes of all time. pls refrain from posting any more ball posts

Give it up JB, nobody’s buying it

Not to say that Brad Stevens is infallible, but when I read posts like this I feel like you’re not really understanding the broader context around the trade. All you’re saying is that the Luka trade was bad and the JB trade is bad because GMs can make bad choices. It just doesn’t really seem like thorough analysis that you’re putting out and you should try reading other informative posts to help understand the POVs.

The Luka trade was based on the fact that Nico Harrison got drunk and blacked out. Or had a lobotomy

The biggest difference between the two trades was that JB was shopped around before being traded, even if only for a short time. Nico only contacted the Lakers and could’ve gotten a better deal for Luka, Brad Stevens contacted teams but there wasn’t a market for JB.

Like others have said this claim is just false, funnily enough the stats say Luka is an average defender

JB clearly wasn’t content being the “#2” in Boston while Luka was fine with being the number one in Da llas. Defensive reasons isn’t analytics, the two scenarios aren’t similar and Nico is despised because he randomly traded the player in question without actually shopping for offers.

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People are mad because brad stevens could have had giannis if he gave up 2 extra players but instead they got paul george. Nico took the face of their franchise and gave him away, if nico had shopped luka the mavs would probably have okc levels of draft capital right now.

Jaylen Brown was personality based because he didn’t mesh with Tatum and was probably weird off the court.

Luka wasn’t personality based, that was based on the worst GM Nico Harrison making one of the dumbest trades in NBA history. Nico showed that anyone can be traded across all major sports.

No this was a money move for the Celtics. 66 million a year for brown ain’t it

Luka played the finals limping off 3 separate injuries in 2024 with Mavs and still did well. Does analytics capture that?

Jaylen Brown is bad analytically, Luka is not.

The Luka trade wasn’t sold as being analytics driven. It couldn’t be as Luka has good analytics.

That being said, both trades were about personality rather than the “basketball reasons” claimed by the front office. The Celtics should have held Jaylen rather than take the trade they did. The fact that it was the best deal currently available on the open market (assuming that’s the case), does not mean it was rational for the Celtics to take it. In negotiation terms, the best alternative to a negotiated agreement, keeping Jaylen, was better than the deal they took. Sometimes the deal is not there. But clearly they wanted to get rid of Jaylen right then regardless, because of his personality.

The trades are different in many senses, for sure. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. Some people are being too glib in saying the trades are the same but the broad comparison is a fair one.

they’re very different. luka is great in analytics. and brown wasn’t traded strictly because they think he’s negative. more that they think he is super overpaid and going to cause trouble if the don’t give him the extension he wants 

Its definitely analytics. 2nd highest in usage this season behind Luka and the only thing to his name is barely even cracking the top 20 in OBPM. Everything else, WS, BPM, VORP is staggeringly low all things considered. Luka is almost always top 5 in these categories.

Its not personality. Its not analytics.

Its ownership.

They don’t want to pay them.

Analytics don’t say Brown is bad, just it’s not 35% of the cap good.

They were money trades. The Mavs didn’t want to pay the super max and the Celtics didn’t want to pay two players making 60 million.

I think both trades were done for financial reasons, and the personality stuff was ascribed later. 

The JB trade was financial. A year ago, the world seemed in agreement that the money wouldn’t work out long term to keep Tatum and JB. Then this off-season we get a media spotlight on all the dumb stuff JB is saying and doing, and then now all of the sudden, it’s personal. New owners wanted to stay under the apron. It’s that simple. Tatum is more marketable than Brown. 

Teams also don’t agree on what the value of each player is. There is no consensus in the nba and guys frequently proves their old teams wrong or their new teams correct.

Luka was stupidity driven.

Brown was analytics combined with stupidity

They were financially motivated on both parts. Dallas and the lakers didn’t want to hand out supermax to Luka/davis. Due to the trade they couldn’t.

Boston’s new ownership group is looking to make a profit. Can’t do that paying Jaylen and Tatum. Second apron is a bitch

Analytics did not support trading Luka for Davis, especially not straight up. Luka’s offensive analytics are very strong, even though his TS% isn’t ultra elite, it’s still pretty good. Everything else except defensive end says DO NOT TRADE. Davis can’t stay healthy, so it’s a moot point to compare them. Dallas also objectively flubbed the last window of people trading 5-6 first round picks for superstars. That trade is going to haunt the Mavs for the next decade in a very direct way. They shorted themselves gobs first round of picks they could’ve used to build around Flagg in the draft and via trade

I’m not sure how much analytics really supports the Brown trade. The Celtics’ record without him aside, Brown’s analytics are fine. They also traded him for nothing, Paul George is not the same guy anymore. He’s old and busted up. They’ve subtracted more than they realize for cap relief in 2 years time. I don’t see this ending well for Boston, because they also traded him to their division rivals who just beat them

Crazier shit has worked out, but if it does in this case, it will be because of dumb luck (Brown gets injured, Celtics have someone who takes a Reaves-type jump, etc.)

Brown’s analytics say he has virtually no impact on the box score. Luka is a huge plus, despite his defensive shortcomings, which are arguably worse than analytics show. They’re both analytically driven trades, but for much different reasons. There seems to be more of a consensus about Brown’s impact on box score being low based on analytics when there’s no doubt about Luka’s.

Dallas also just didn’t want to pay Luka the super max.

No award has ever deceived more people than that Finals MVP

So they traded the guy that won them a ring in Brown and kept the superstar that choked on 2 finals appearances?Is it because Tatum is more marketable?I would had traded the guy that choked on 2 finals and build around Brown.

There isn’t much that will ever compare to the Luka trade as it was so piss poor that it was essentially a prime Luka for a injury riddled AD and a singular 1st round pick.

Nico should never be allowed to run a team ever again. Brad at least got some draft capital back that you can somewhat make sense of.

The scale said one at a time please

The Luka trade is just pure stupidity, Nico wants AD so bad he just doesn’t care and believe his own narrative.
The Jaylen Brown trade on the other hand is just a consequence of Brad trying to go all in on Giannis but failed. He knew from the start that there is no turning back once they confirmed it that JB is being included on a package to get Giannis.

People need to stop thinking that any of these trades are even remotely related to basketball performance. They are very clearly associated with under the table deals and favors between the billionaire owners and the front office fall guys are expected to come up with some nonsense narrative that fits the bill.

It is not a coincidence that this kinda inexplicable trade happens just one year after the Celtics are purchased by private equity.

With both of those trades, there’s a case to be made that trading away the MVP candidate is justifiable. (I don’t buy it for Luka, but there is a case.) With both of them, the crazy thing is what the team got back. The Mavericks got back Anthony Davis. Davis is of course frequently injured and played a grand total of 29 games for the Mavs. When they traded him away, it was for a lot less than Luka would command on the open market. The Celtics at least got back two decent draft picks, but they also took back one of the worst contracts in the league in Paul George. If you want to explain either trade you have to explain why the Celtics or the Mavs accepted such weak offers, not just why they traded away a star at all.

This man knows ball👍

What the hell is going on? Did the off season make everyone’s mother drop them on their heads?

None of that analytics talk came from sources in the Celtics organization. As being what thought let alone reason behind the trade or at all. It was from other teams. Beyond interpreting insider statements as facts. And we are screwed in how prevelant people can’t interpret information and play know it all off it.

Brown sucks just get over it

Both were long term financial based. Mavs didn’t want to pay the supermax for someone they felt was lazy and going to be injured all the time. The Celtics didn’t want to pay Brown because they didn’t feel his production analytically was worth the long term dollars. George they only got to pay for 2 years and can be done.

Luka was traded because the Mavs plan was to give nobody a maximum extension. They traded
Luka to not pay him

what the fuck does that last sentence even mean?

is this AI?

the jaylen brown comparison is kind of apples to oranges. the celtics traded him because the second apron made keeping that core financially impossible, not because analytics said he was bad. brad stevens himself said it was a cap move. the luka trade was a philosophy disagreement — nico wanted defense and conditioning, plain and simple. the media treatment gap is real though, stevens trades a finals mvp and gets called a genius, harrison does it and he’s public enemy #1

Who ever said that the luka trade was analytics driven? Even their official reason wasn’t

The trades were made because they just didn’t like them personally. No way you trade Jaylen Brown for this meager return. Every other team in the league would want draft compensation just to accept Paul George’s contract alone

BMI = Injuries to a super Max player.

Brown was traded to be silenced and discredited.

Brown was traded for financial reasons.

They dont want to pay him, but instead of just saying that, theyre peddling all this bullshit analytics data and rumors to slander his character

The Luka Doncic trade went so well for Nico

So many invites for this

I believe they were both salary based. Both players make insane amounts of money but neither are Jordan, Kobe or Bron in popularity. So these new billionaires aren’t interested in just playing for talented players.

This is such a bad take, who the fuck even thought that Luka was traded due to analytics? Are people so ignorant that think everything they don’t like is analytics? Is this post just ragebait?

We’re all humans, we all have emotions, and they likely got them hurt seeing the cost benefit ratio is quite interesting

so the celtics paying tatum and brown like half a billion through 2029 has nothing to do with it?

The common denominator in both trades is new ownership that don’t care about on court success, but profit margins.

Dallas didn’t want to pay the tax to keep a championship contender, same with Boston. Both ownership groups just want to have seasonal profit and eventually sell these franchises once they are able to flip them for a massive profit.

In every major professional sport there are only a handful of owners willing to dig into their own pockets to maintain a standard of excellence. There are always exceptions that “work smarter not harder” but it’s much easier to put out a shitty mid-teir team and collect checks.

Don’t fall for the conspiracies and propaganda that hide the truth that professional sports teams are just financial investments.

Bruh, Luka got traded because he was eligible for $345m/5y and they didn’t want to pay that.

It’s that simple.

Both were extension based

LA was the only destination Luka was heading and that is the only clue that matters

“I’m not wrong, you just don’t like me” vibes

The Luka trade was a league-level fix to help the Lakers.

The Jaylen trade was the Celtics preempting a power struggle between the Jays and not believing in paying Jaylen Brown $70M a year.

Simple as.