Finn (Thread): Brad Stevens was a guest today on Scal and Frank Isola’s NBA show on SiriusXM. A few excerpts
Wow I didn’t realize Brad is 50 years old (next month). To me he’s still so young like it’s 2013… And then I realize I’m also 13 years older now
I think regardless of how the season plays out, Brad has earned the trust with the decisions that have been made.
If Philly
is successful this year and the Celtics aren’t, people will come for him immediately when there will be numerous factors contributing to that possible outcome.
Have the faith and be patient.
I think judging this trade on if Philly is successful and if Boston is not this year is not the right lens. Honestly, Philly’s success shouldn’t matter at all - if the Celtics are able to improve their team due to not having a $70mil player on the books after 2 years, THAT’S the barometer.
The only point I disagree with is the 2 years part.
I would say after resetting the repeater tax
, which resets at the end of this year.
That’s when the flexibility and extra assets open back up.
Now that being said, the moves that will likely be made using that flexibility won’t happen until at least next offseason, and possibly as late as the trade deadline next season, not this season.
Then after that, we have to see how those trades play out in the 2028 playoffs, so it’s not REALLY two years, but it’s also not really one year.
We’ll start to see the vision take shape during the next season, but won’t get the results until at least next seasons playoffs.
But usually if you type that much nuance out, people’s eyes glaze over and they move on to the next comment.
Good stuff. G’ahead and get nuanced. I’ve got 12 paragraphs left before I tap.
The 2028 trade deadline is basically two years away. You were just disagreeing to be disagreeable. You actually agree.
Gotta beat Philly to win it all. I think if Philly stays consistent with JB being a key part of the lineup and keeping us from the finals, it’ll be seen as a failure on Brad’s end. Big “if” on multiple fronts but these trades don’t happen in a vacuum.
Giving away two years of contention, to get off a contract one year early isn’t really a success in my mind… You’re betting on a 2029 championship, with a 34yo White, 31yo Tatum and Pritchard.
The next two years are not just a throwaway, at all.
We just got bounced in the first round so pretty charitable of you to say “two years of contention”
Yeah I think right here is the crux of the problem with how people view this trade. People still think we’re contenders after getting bounced in the 2nd and 1st rounds.
The trade was a bad trade, it is never going to be viewed as good trade. Any future success the team has will be in spite of the trade, not because of it.
No offense but the fact that nothing can change your mind on this kinda just shows you’re being irrational about it. Like you’re saying even if Tatum carries us to multiple championships while we beat Philly in the playoffs and Brown averages 15 PPG, you still won’t consider that maybe Brad knows more than you?
I understand the desire to rationalize and get excited for the upcoming season. But trading JB to Philly for an old ass Paul George and a few decent picks is fucking horrific. The reaction of literally the entire league for a week after was, rightly, that they’d be clearly better off having done nothing. No amount of post hoc rationalization changes that. It’s really too bad.
If Philly is successful this year and the Celtics aren’t
Well I can promise you that will not be the case.
The analytics are aggressively in our favor and not in Philly’s. Their defense is not going to be good. Paul George was holding up their defense big time. It was really bad with Maxey/Embiid (either one or both) when PG wasn’t on the floor. And PG was awesome when Embiid wasn’t on the court and Bona was. Nobody respect Embiid’s jump shot and it just killed driving lanes for Paul, and Embiid never rolls either so there’s no easy lobs. He won’t have that issue with our centers. Remember how Al looked washed with Philly and then was great with us? We are just a smarter org than Philly.
Philly massively decreased the shooting and Maxey is going to have to provide spacing now, but his best attribute was that he does not turn the ball over on offense. Can’t help with that as much if you’re off ball. LeBron and Jaylen turn the ball over a lot (Embiid also not good about that).
Whereas the Celtics are just basically maxing out every analytical advantage with this roster - 3 point shooting, spacing to make rim attempts much more efficient, offensive rebounding, turnover suppression, elite defense + Brad added a ton of guys who now generate turnovers (our main weakness under Joe).
There are enough people saying the team is better with PG than with JB that the other factors don’t matter.
Enough people on this self selecting sub full of JB haters & cope artisans
Literally nobody else is saying that. Nobody.
Are you OK because tons and tons of basketball people are saying our team is better this year?
I’m not sure you understand what the word “literally” means. Because you’re wrong. Literally.
Yeah, that’s probably true
I disagree because I do not believe Stevens would have made this decision if ownership did not tell him to reduce costs. I also do not believe it was solely due to the new cba. This is a mandate from the new ownership group to cut cost everything else is bullshit or a cover story.
Or they’re dumping salary to reset the repeater tax penalties in preparation to spend big in 2027…
We’ve seen Brad make drastic changes when things aren’t working before you’re just using new ownership as a scapegoat. Paying Brown and Tatum was not sustainable from a roster building standpoint given the direction the league is moving.
Yeah, it’s basically impossible to contend if you have 2 supermax players. My quibble with the trade is I wished we got more for JB, but the logic behind it makes sense.
I don’t think anyone disagrees moving off Jaylen was inevitable in the coming years, but the repeater tax would reset had this trade never happened all it would have taken is to not pay Ron, no disrespect to him but losing him instead of trading Jaylen for a has been we can’t depend on is a no brainer
I don’t agree
Why? After getting bounced in the 2nd and 1st round, why is getting rid of our most inefficient player in terms of salary to free up our team building have to do with cheap ownership and not smart management?
Because the best player was there both times and unable to get out of the first round. Tatum is the failure here not the second best player.
Me when I make things up to get mad at
the ownership might end up being cheap but the cutting costs story doesnt align with them trying to trade for Giannis
Yes it does. I don’t believe they ever made a competitive offer. Public reporting is that they did not so they never tried to get giannis
I love Brad and trust him.
But if the 76ers win a championship it will kinda still suck a lot
76ers are making a bet as well; that Embiid can stay healthy enough to get through 4 series in spring. Because without him, the degree of difficulty rises expotentially.
With Maxey, Edgecomb, Brown, and Lebron, I’m not convinced they need Embiid to win
Philly getting bounced in the 2nd round again lol
prob after bouncing us in the first round again
Yeah we’ll get the powerhouse super team in round 1 and then the geriatric retirement home squad will show up against the Knicks or raptors
They’re not even going to be that good lol
Bad on defense and clunky as fuck on offense. You realize they’re not getting like 2013 LeBron… right? He’s pretty fucking washed for him. The Lakers were 10th in offense the last 2 years despite having two better offensive players than anyone on the 76ers in Luka and Reaves. He doesn’t move the needle at all.
Paul was the one kind of carrying their roster.
I’m the biggest homer there is but we cannot seriously pretend Paul fucking George was carrying the roster. And I love PG. If he plays for a year or two here, I’ll get his Celtics jersey. But let’s be real bro
I was half kidding but you can see the splits here. Their defense was terrible without him and Jaylen and LeBron aren’t good defenders (Bron obviously was, but he’s 42 and isn’t good on D anymore). That is a bad defensive lineup without much shooting (two things PG provides in spades).
They’re also going to force Maxey to space because he’s the only real shooter in the lineup (VJ was better on catch and shoot, but he was only 35.4% overall on only 7.7 per 100 so I’ll believe it when I see it), but his primary skill is turnover suppression, a thing you can’t help as much with without the ball. The 76ers are just not maximizing their roster whatsoever and I think their fans are in for a rude awakening.
idc how old he is he’s still smarter than 99% of players.
Their seeding doesn’t matter as long as they get into the playoffs and they will
It’s irrelevant honestly. Someone was gonna win, it wasn’t gonna be us, whether it’s philly or not really doesn’t matter.
Just don’t go on twitter for a couple weeks, you won’t even remember they won. The knicks won for the first time in 50 something years and it’s been like 3 months and nobody cares it’s on to the next.
It does matter, you don’t help your biggest rival win a championship. Trading him to Portland for the exact same return would have been received way better by most Boston fans
Philly isn’t our biggest rival. They beat us one time in the playoffs in your lifetime and now they’re a rival lol?
Trading him to portland would’ve been great, unfortunately jaylen told them he wouldn’t play for them and that was the end of that.
Maybe the issue is everyone who is still complaining isn’t aware that jaylen was nuking his own trade value by telling all the teams we were talking to he wouldn’t play for them, philly was the only one left. Reason why JB was surprised by philly, is cause brad stopped communicating with him, because JB kept backdooring the trade talks.
So idk what the point of caring about philly is, it’s irrelevant. We’re not even contending this year we’re still ducking the tax.
Edit: Smh, sub is still brain dead i guess about this trade. Unfortunate, yall gotta grow up. Can’t live your life this concerned about what other fanbases are gonna say to you on twitter. If we traded JB to the lakers what you said would make more sense, but philly? Irrelevant to us. They have 2 years and they’re done.
The problem is that Philly was presumably offering us the biggest return. If you were in Brad’s shoes would you have taken a worse offer from Portland just to avoid trading Brown to Philly?
Who’s frank isola? Is he similar to kenny beacham?
I think the new ownership has changed Brad. Or maybe thats just what comes off publicly.
Wouldn’t shock me if hes not in Bos long term.
Ask him about Jayden springer