While it’s possible the Boston Celtics will eventually regret giving Jaylen Brown a five-year super-max extension that projects to be the richest deal in NBA history, it was the only real option available to them, believes Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer.
As O’Connor outlines, Boston has title aspirations in 2023-24 and there was likely no viable trade involving Brown that would have raised the team’s ceiling in the short term. The Celtics could have tried to pay Brown less than his maximum, but would’ve risked alienating him and compromising their chemistry heading into an important season — not to mention potentially losing him in unrestricted free agency a year from now.
Executives around the league who spoke to Sean Deveney of Heavy.com agreed that giving Brown a super-max extension was the most logical path for the Celtics.
“It is a good deal because he is a star player and that is what they had to pay him,” an Eastern Conference executive said. “I love the people who say they should not have given him that contract. Like, OK, then what should they have done? Traded him? Let him go to free agency? The same people who are beating them up for signing him would be beating them up if they did not sign him. It’s crazy.”
With Jayson Tatum due for a super-max extension of his own in 2024, the Celtics may face financial challenges down the road, but having two young stars on big contracts is a “champagne problem,” O’Connor writes, suggesting that it’s not something the team needs to worry about right away. If Boston ultimately decides that it can’t win a title with a roster built around Tatum and Brown, the club is now better positioned to eventually make a trade rather than having to undergo a full reset.
Here’s more on Brown’s new deal:
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