Boston Celtics president Brad Stevens offered up a big hint regarding why he controversially chose to trade Jaylen Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers.
Stevens admitted that the Celtics were concerned about having most of their salary cap tied up in Brown and Jayson Tatum. In Stevens’ mind, depth and flexibility are essential in today’s NBA, and the combination of those two contracts deprived the Celtics of that flexibility.
“We looked at the way we’ve finished the last couple years and also looked at the unbelievable way we played in the regular season the last couple years,” Stevens said. “The path looked a little bit more challenging to me with 70 percent of our (salary cap) usage tied to two players. The reality of this era in this day and age in the NBA is that you have to do a great job and you have to have the optionality to do a great job of building out depth that can hopefully replace the irreplaceable individual.”
Brad Stevens on trading Jaylen Brown:
— Savage (@Savageboston) July 6, 2026
“The path looked a little bit more challenging to me. I might be wrong…but the path looked a little bit more challenging with 70% of our cap and such a high percent of our usage tied into two players.” pic.twitter.com/XNBFESwlgb
Brown is due to make roughly $57 million next season. Tatum’s salary is slightly over $58 million. That was one of the reasons the Celtics were rumored to be considering trades involving some other core players.
The general sense among fans is that the Celtics did not get nearly enough back in exchange for Brown. Stevens seems to be implying that the team will be able to make other moves to compensate for Brown’s departure. Time will tell if he is correct.
