They probably wanted to, but Brown was injured going into last offseason and had surgery on his torn meniscus. Meaning his value might have even been lower then.

Also, Chisholm might have actually been against it due to optics (buying a team and immediately trading your 2nd best player).

I think they would have considered trading Brown at the deadline, but they were too good and Tatum was coming back. I think Stevens assumed the team would be ass last year and they weren’t. A miscalculation on his part

Why not evacuate Pearl Harbor before the Japanese attacked?

I would need to find the source, but I remember reading it came out we did try to trade him. The Celtics shopped him around and the offers were lackluster. They decided to run it back and hope that a career year would increase his value - fat load of good that did lol.

I’m not sure the return would have been any better - there was a LOT of questions about whether JB would be good enough to lead a team on his own. Expectations were that the JB-lead squad was only going to win about 30 games. Not that ALL of those questions have been answered, but JB was much better on the court that expected.

Had they traded JB last year, it would have been purely because they DID want to tank. And maybe they should have, given how good all of the top four guys have looked. But that’s not what they decided to do

I think they still wanted to be competitive with Tatum injured for most of the year. If they Trade Brown with no Tatum then you’re not as good.

Some guesses off the top of my head:

After JT’s injury, last year’s priority was to start the inevitable transition to the new CBA and stabilize cos that was the part that was certain.

Brad did an underrated masterful job of doing this in a relatively quick manner with a lot of moves involving core players.

As optimistic and hopeful as they (and some of us) were with JT’s injury, no one really knew for certain how his recovery/return would look like. This was a crucial uncertain part.

JT is the first to do this procedure in the NBA and is the new blueprint for recovery with this nightmare injury. He had a very quick recovery with a good number of actual NBA games, including playoffs, as sample size to assess his game/condition.

Most likely, they deemed him still being more than capable of the next phase – the JT era (from Banner 18’s the Jays era).

Last year’s roster gave all of us a glimpse of the new era with role players and development… the minimum contracts that a lot of fellow fans made fun of, calling them ‘scrubs’.

Last year gave JB the best chance to show his potential in leading a team before this month’s extension eligibility.

It actually was the perfect time to ‘boost’ his value. A lot of us overvalued him in the trade market, for understandable and obvious reasons, but the CBA reality and the market has spoken, despite his best numbers season ever.

JB’s trade value turned out to be not as certain as we all thought/hoped it would be.

TLDR… Bottomline, they prioritized the certain parts of getting under the tax and start the repeater reset, and player development, while awaiting the results of the uncertain ones.

EDIT: Geez! My reply is so long I should’ve just made it a post 😅

Honest truth is that the front office hasn’t made any winning or plus trades since we lost to the Knicks. Seemingly still very good at drafting.

Jrue Holiday for Anfernee was supposed to be awful but Simons was great here compared to what everyone expected

Anferee for Vucevic was terrible, guy wasn’t playable at all for us in the post season

Kristaps turned into hot air (we sent him to the Hawks and they turned him into Kuminga and Hield)

JB for Paul George is atrocious, no one will ever convince me otherwise

We don’t have that magic touch we used to and it shows.

Nothing changed in the long-term plan. It takes two years to get out of the repeater tax and they had to do it at some point after loading up for the ‘24 title run and trying to run it back in ‘25. As soon as Tatum got hurt and they were able to dump enough salary to duck the tax last year, we knew next offseason is the target to go all-in. People who thought they were going to spend money now and not skip the tax again for ‘26-27 simply have not been paying attention. If Brad thinks this move sets us up better for making a big splash next year then that’s why he did it now.

They are positioned to make a run to close out the CBA and then be ready to make moves again going into the start of the next one. If they don’t make the moves next offseason then everybody worried about cheap ownership will be proven right. If they pull it off, Brad will have managed to put together two all-in shots during this CBA which is more than most teams can say.

Shams said last offseason they took calls, they clearly didn’t like the offers they got

I’m not sure what the point of this is. Traded last year, this year, who cares. He’s gone now.

They very well may have tried and didn’t like any of the offers. There may have been a preference or even mandate from ownership to remain competitive in the first year under new ownership. They could’ve thought JB being the number 1 on the team and having a year like he did would significantly boost his trade value and allow for a trade this summer. Who knows, maybe they didn’t know how Tatum’s recovery would go and wanted to keep their options open as to potentially locking down Jaylen long term.

Think about what the financial implications would have been in terms of lost ticket sales and media revenue from having national tv games bumped.

They tried. But didn’t want to try too hard because the new owners are too nice. You saw how people reacted this summer, imagine how they would have reacted last summer with JT injured…

because Tatum got hurt

Maybe they thought that showcasing him as a true number one option would increase his trade value to teams that need one (and are also usually pretty bad, like Sacramento)

> what changed

Tatum got hurt.

Had Tatum not gotten hurt and the team ended with anything but a title, Brown would have been traded last year (Porzingis, too). Jrue and Kornet and probably Horford would still be Celtics.

Theoretically JBs value should go up being showcased as the number 1 guy without Tatum and with a higher usage. JB was coming off a slightly worse season so it makes sense to rebuild his value. 

This obviously ended up not true but that was my thinking last season and this off-season prior to the trade. 

Reporting is making it more clear there was a rift between Brown and the organization after his increased role this year

JB’s value was even lower last offseason. Just came off a torn meniscus repair, was less efficient on offense and impactful on defense. He had more duds than good games in the playoffs. Had another year on his contract plus still having the extension decision this summer.

Would have gotten less last year. Also we didn’t want to.

there were a couple reports that they had discussions with other teams around the deadline and before last season I think they probably just saw his low value and thought maybe a season of #1 option max usage hoops might pump up his value

IMO they should have traded him the moment Tatum got hurt, would be a gamble but return would be better.

It’s on top of my mind as well. The timing makes very little sense. If this was thought out, planned and not an impulsive mandate from ownership then they would have spend all last season finding JB a home for a big package. They should have given Tatum the year off, played the young guys a bunch and let the record fall where it may (likely lottery). We could have come into this year with a much better group.

JT’s injury changed everything I would imagine.

Brad choked.  We would have been way better off if he had traded him last summer