Is it time to consider moving Jaylen Brown proactively? Not yet, says an SI analyst, but that day may arrive

With the Boston Celtics seemingly stuck in a permanent rut in yet another season, fans and analysts are both starting to explore what has been until now the third rail of Celtics hypotheticals — considering a trade that would break up the All-Star duo of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. And while Brown has been making recent inroads in terms of his perceived value as a player, he is also generally seen as the 1b to Tatum’s 1a, making the Georgia native the more frequent focal point of such proposals.

One such hypothetic trade came from Sports Illustrated’s Michael Pina, who posited a deal in a new article that would send Brown to the Atlanta Hawks that has — even now — managed to ruffle some feathers.

In Pina’s defense, he makes the trade clearly about an uncomfortable future moment that Celtics fans do need to begin considering should the front office make missteps on what is a fraught path to getting Boston’s remaining assets assembled into something that looks like a contender.

With Brown’s current deal set to go into its final season at the end of next season, his value will not be greater than it will be at the end of next season.

Given that timing, we strongly believe a much, much better deal should be available to Boston if they did choose to go that route than is imagined by the SI writer (more on this shortly).

But, his point stands that the Celtics need to get out in front of a longstanding talent drain, and Boston needs to move Brown without blinking if he will not extend at the end of the 2022-23 season, as much as it pains us to say that.

The front office has this trade deadline and the coming offseason to get things right — if it does not, expect changes to the team the Cal-Berkeley is playing for, as well as in who is running the team.

The deal proposed by Pina? Per the man himself, the “Hawks get Jaylen Brown. The Celtics get De’Andre Hunter, Kevin Huerter, Jalen Johnson, and two unprotected first-round picks.”

Hunter is better than his situation has allowed him to look, buried in a deep rotation full of similarly capable or better players competing for playing time — thus necessitating consolidation.

The picks are likely middling when they come up unless far off and not so useful to the Celtics save for further deals, and Johnson and Huerter fine if not transformative depth pieces.

Given Brown would likely be the best young talent available via trade in most if not all seasons barring further disgruntled young stars hinting they might skip town, we believe this is far too poor of a package to get the deal done for Boston.

Even if it is better than a lot of reactions on social media have implied.

A deal similar to what The Athletic’s Sam Amick is reporting the Hawks to be considering featuring Danilo Gallinari and Cam Reddish, for example, serves as a good jumping-off point. With Delon Wright folded into a deal for Brown’s contract with salary ballast and draft assets to taste seems a more plausible deal for both sides.

Let us be clear — as Pina was in his article — that we do not believe this is a deal for the present, with plenty of other options to be taken before such a drastic move were to be made.

And let us take it even further, given we would not entertain trading Brown at all before he forewent an extension, signaling the risk of his flight.

Even still, with the cardinal sin of the Ainge administration of the Celtics in recent years being reactionary to the ability of talent to leave the team instead of being proactive in retaining it, Pina is not wrong to prep our minds for a potentially undesirable future that could arrive sooner than we’d like.

This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire. Follow us on Facebook!

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