The Boston Celtics have become a laughingstock among NBA fans and pundits alike after they made the puzzling decision to trade Jaylen Brown away after a career year. Brown, in the wake of Jayson Tatum’s absence after stunningly rupturing his Achilles during the 2025 NBA playoffs, emerged as Boston’s number one option, recording almost 30 points a game while soaking up tons of usage.
What made this trade so befuddling is that not too many players in the NBA have the talent and the skillset to take on a higher-usage role all while remaining as productive, if not more, on a per-possession basis than he was in years past. But the Celtics felt as though they had to make the trade to maintain future cap flexibility, and because they may not be as sold on the merits of Brown’s 2025-26 season as the majority of fans are.
Moreover, there are rumors floating around saying that Brown was not going to be willing to take a backseat to Tatum once the latter re-assumes his place as the top dog in Beantown hoops.
On paper, the Celtics did look like they got considerably worse by letting Brown go. But to play devil’s advocate, here are a few reasons why the Celtics, at the very least, can match last season’s performance in the regular season all while having the potential to make some noise in the Eastern Conference playoffs.
Jayson Tatum should be fully healthy this season
Tatum being healthier for next season is the first thing that Celtics fans who remain optimistic over their team bring up when clapping back against detractors who believe that Boston is somehow going to fall off a cliff with Brown now off to their rival, Philadelphia 76ers.
Tatum wasn’t close to being at his best when he returned to action less than a year after he tore his Achilles in the playoffs against the New York Knicks. Even then, he was rather productive. He put up 22/10/5 last season even though it was evident that he was still getting his legs back, and glimpses of the old Tatum are still there.
He did end up missing Game 7 of the Celtics’ first-round clash against the 76ers in this year’s playoffs due to a left knee injury, but that seems to be more precautionary if anything. There is a good chance that Tatum, with another offseason full of work, could be back to being his prime version when next season comes around.
With Brown now gone, Tatum is going to be the Celtics’ undisputed alpha dog. There hasn’t been a season in his career where he hasn’t had to share the court with Brown, and it will be interesting to see how much more productive he could be with the offensive hierarchy in Boston being clearer than ever.
Tatum’s playmaking has improved year after year, and once he regains full confidence in his legs, he should be back to being a more devastating rim-attacker. The Celtics will need him to be, as putting pressure on the rim might be one of the team’s biggest issues. He’s going to have to cut down on some of his three-point attempts to accommodate for the responsibilities that come with taking on a larger role.
There is a non-zero chance that Tatum averages 30/10/6 on 46/37/83 shooting splits, and that should be enough to keep Boston as one of the best teams in the NBA.
Celtics’ system is a machine
For all the flak the Celtics offensive system has caught for being too reliant on the jump shot, opening themselves up to a wide range of variance as a result, there are no questions that this leads to plenty of wins, particularly in the regular season.
The Celtics continue to use whatever mathematical advantage they can get, and this cannot be more evident by how they attempted nearly eight more triples per contest than any other team in the NBA this past season. They also made two more threes per game, tilting that very important part of the basketball mathematical equation to their advantage.
And then there’s the matter of maximizing the possession battle. The Celtics recorded the fewest turnovers per game this past season, and this has always been a key strength of theirs under head coach Joe Mazzulla.
Since the Celtics promoted Mazzulla to the head coach (at the start of the 2022-23 season), they’ve coughed the ball up just 12.4 times per game, the fewest in the NBA. Last season, they also led the league in this metric, which helped them overcome whatever talent deficit they might have been facing on a game-to-game basis.
Part of why Boston may have been willing to trade Brown away was that he wasn’t able to overcome high turnover numbers by recording high assist totals. He posted an assist to turnover ratio of 1.4; in contrast, Payton Pritchard had an AST:TO of 3.7 last year, while Derrick White’s was at 3.09. Even Tatum’s AST:TO was at 2.18 this past season. (Paul George’s was at over 2 last season as well.)
Suffice to say, the Celtics should be able to maximize more possessions this season by trading away one of their most turnover-prone players. They will then get to redistribute Brown’s shots towards other more prolific three-point shooters like White, Pritchard, George, and Sam Hauser, just to name a few.
The tools are there for Boston to make up for Brown’s production as a collective, by winning the three-point war and possession battle.
Boston’s defense is going to be elite
The Celtics’ defense has been among the best in the NBA for the past five seasons (they have not finished outside the top-five in defensive rating since the 2021-22 season), and there’s no reason to think that it’s magically going to become worse, especially considering who they got in return for Brown.
George may not be the player he once was, and his legacy has become defined by who he’s able to bring back via trade, but make no mistake about it, he remains an elite defender in the association.
The 36-year-old has lost a step, but now that he’s been taking on a smaller role on offense, he’s been able to devote more of his energy to defending the perimeter. Celtics fans will be the first to attest to how elite George remains on that end after he played a huge role in flustering both Tatum and Brown during Boston’s first-round exit against Philly.
Many advanced metrics rate George as the better defender over Brown even at this late stage of the former’s career, and this may be one of the reasons why Boston was content with getting PG back as the main trade piece in the deal with Philly. And it’s an added bonus that George should be willing to defer to Tatum, easing naturally into an off-ball role as a movement shooter who can punish mismatches off the bounce.
And then the Celtics also stole Mitchell Robinson from the reigning champion New York Knicks, filling a valuable need at backup center. The addition of Nikola Vucevic was an attempt for Boston to address this need, but Vucevic was so horrendous at defense that Mazzulla ended up benching him towards the latter stages of the Philly series.
Robinson should allow the Celtics to win the possession battle more often due to his relentlessness on the offensive boards, and he should be able to go full tilt most nights since he’ll be backing up Neemias Queta, helping preserve his body for the postseason.
Even with Boston missing a ferocious rebounder and rim protector like Robinson last season, they still finished fourth in defensive rating, behind only the likes of the Oklahoma City Thunder, Detroit Pistons, and San Antonio Spurs. They should be better this year, as there’s a chance that only OKC would boast a better defense than theirs.