The Jaylen Brown trade haul looks bad. NBA history says it could have been worse
· Yahoo Sports
Not only was the Boston Celtics' trade of Jaylen Brown to a direct rival in the Philadelphia 76ers shocking, coming seemingly completely out of left field, but the return the storied franchise got for its star wing was probably even more surprising, and not in a positive way.
That's especially true because the reigning Executive of the Year, Brad Stevens, was the one who executed the deal. Perhaps if a more poorly run franchise had made that trade, people would have been less surprised, but for Stevens to seemingly net his team such a mediocre - and that's putting it kindly - return for a homegrown player who just averaged nearly 29 points per game on a 56-win team was startling, especially for Celtics fans.
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For those who may not be fully aware of the details, the entire trade return for Brown from the 76ers was this:
- 36-year-old Paul George, who two years and $110.7 million left on his contract, as well as a player option on the deal
- 2028 first-round pick (could convert to a pick swap if that's more favorable to the Celtics)
- 2031 unprotected first-round pick
- 2028 second-round pick (the best pick between Golden State's, Oklahoma City's and Milwaukee's)
- 2030 second-round pick (the best pick between Washington's, Portland's and Phoenix's)
That's it.
A deal of this magnitude with that bang-average of a return got us thinking: What returns have other teams who have traded players of similar caliber to Brown netted?
To determine that, we took a look at all the players in NBA history who have been traded in the offseason following a Top 6 finish in the previous campaign's MVP vote. Surprisingly, that has happened more often than one might think, as Brown became the ninth such player to be traded in league history.
And, coincidentally enough, the most recent player to have that happen to them was Paul George in 2019, who was traded that summer from the Oklahoma City Thunder to the Los Angele Clippers. Also coincidentally, both George and Brown were 29 years old at the time of those trades.
George and Brown were in similar positions at the time of those trades, though George had just finished third in the MVP vote in 2018-19 (three spots higher than Brown), albeit on a worse team (the Thunder went 49-33 that season) than Boston was this past year. Plus, the Clippers basically had to fleece themselves to make this deal because it also meant landing another superstar, Kawhi Leonard, in free agency. Even so, the George return for the Thunder smashes what the Celtics just got for Brown, as L.A. traded Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Danilo Gallinari for the California native, as well as four unprotected first-round picks, one lottery-protected first-round pick and two first-round pick swaps for George.
If the Celtics had landed a similar haul for Brown on Wednesday, Boston fans might be doing backflips.
Prior to the George trade in 2019, the next most recent player to be traded the offseason following a Top 6 MVP finish was Isaiah Thomas, another Celtic, in 2017. That season prior to the trade, Thomas had just posted an absurd campaign, averaging 28.9 points and 5.9 assists on 37.9 percent shooting from three and leading a 53-win Boston team to the Eastern Conference Finals. Thomas finished fifth in the MVP that season for his efforts, which was rewarded by Boston trading him to the Cleveland Cavaliers, along with Jae Crowder and Ante Zizic for a 2018 first-round pick, a 2020 second-round pick... as well as Kyrie Irving.
Thomas may have been emotionally hurt by the way things went down in Boston after his magical 2016-17 season, but the ability to land Irving was something Boston couldn't pass up. Plus, Thomas suffered a hip injury in the 2017 playoffs that ended his postseason run early, and that he quite frankly never recovered from, so the Celtics were savvy to deal him away before having to commit long-term money to him.
Then, there was Shaquille O'Neal in 2004. Everyone remembers the very public breakup between Shaq and the Lakers, one that saw the purple-and-gold choose to build around the younger Kobe Bryant rather than commit more long-term money to O'Neal, but the Big Aristotle was still close to the top of his game at the time of the trade. In 2003-04, the season prior to the trade, O'Neal finished sixth in the MVP vote, was a 1st Team All-NBAer and had just put up 21.5 points, 11.5 rebounds and 2.5 blocks on 58.4 percent shooting for a Lakers team that went 56-26 and got to the NBA Finals.
Falling in the NBA Finals that year wound up being it for the Shaq-and-Kobe Lakers, though, as O'Neal would be traded in the 2004 offseason to the Miami Heat for Lamar Odom, Caron Butler, Brian Grant, a 2006 first-round pick and a 2007 second-round pick. Truth be told, that's probably a worse haul than what the Celtics just got for Brown, but O'Neal was three years older (32) at the time of the trade, and looked to be on the way down, while Brown is coming off a career campaign, so it makes sense why the Lakers maybe couldn't extract more for O'Neal.
Prior to O'Neal, we have to go way back in time to find a similar player traded following a Top 6 MVP finish. The next most recent was Moses Malone, one of the most underrated big men in league history, in 1982. But the Malone deal was perhaps even more shocking than Brown's, because Malone won league MVP honors in 1981-82, putting up 31.1 points, 14.7 rebounds and 1.5 blocks on 51.9 percent shooting, and did so as a 26-year-old.
But his team at the time, the Houston Rockets, had undergone an ownership change, one that felt like paying Malone $2 million, only to have the team lose in the first round of the playoffs, wasn't worth it. So Malone signed an offer sheet with the 76ers that offseason, one that Houston matched in order to sign and trade the big man to Philadelphia in exchange for a 1983 first-round pick and veteran center, Caldwell Jones. The rest is history, as the '83 Sixers, led by Malone and Julius Erving, were a powerhouse, going 65-17 in the regular season and 12-1 in the playoffs on their way to winning the title that year. Malone would win MVP again in 1982-83, too, making the Rockets' inability to get more for him via trade all the more shocking in hindsight.
Two years earlier, in 1980, the Seattle SuperSonics traded disgruntled star guard Dennis Johnson to the Phoenix Suns, the summer after Johnson was named to 2nd Team All-NBA while finishing fifth in the MVP vote in his age-25 campaign. Two seasons prior to Johnson's trade, he had helped lead the Sonics to a championship and was named Finals MVP, too, so the decision to move him was surprising, to say the least.
Seattle traded Johnson primarily because he didn't get along with legendary head coach Lenny Wilkens, and because they thought they were getting an even deal with Phoenix in landing then-four-time All-Star Paul Westphal, who had just completed back-to-back 1st Team All-NBA campaigns. But the rest of Westphal's career after that deal was plagued by injury, while Johnson would go on to earn more MVP votes in Phoenix and then become a vital part of the '80s Celtics, so the Sonics very much lost that trade.
There was also Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1975, who was traded by the Milwaukee Bucks the summer after he posted a Top 5 MVP finish. What's more, before that, the UCLA legend had won three MVPs in four seasons, and finished Top 3 in the vote in the other two races for the prestigious award. But trading the NBA's eventual all-time leading scorer wasn't Milwaukee's call, as Abdul-Jabbar simply didn't like living in Milwaukee and preferred a deal either to the Lakers or to the New York Knicks, his hometown team.
The Bucks eventually acquiesced, trading Abdul-Jabbar to Los Angeles for Elmore Smith, Brian Winters and Junior Bridgeman, as well as cash. That trade may seem lopsided in hindsight, but many were high on Winters and Bridgeman at the time, as they were both promising young players. Winters even became a two-time All-Star in Milwaukee.
Of course, that haul wound up being poor, especially for a superstar of Abdul-Jabbar's caliber. Celtics fans of today can rest easy, as there's no way the haul they just got for Brown ages that badly.
That leaves us with two players left who fall under the Brown category: Wilt Chamberlain and Lenny Wilkens, both of whom were traded in 1968 after Top 6 MVP finishes. Chamberlain was coming off three straight MVP trophies at the time of his trade, one that the big man had demanded for reasons that still aren't fully clear to this day, though Chamberlain biographer Robert Cherry believes it had to do with the 50-point-per-game scorer in 1961-62 wanting to be around celebrities of his caliber in Los Angeles. Whatever the reason, Chamberlain was moved to the Lakers for Darrall Imhoff, Archie Clark and Jerry Chambers. Imhoff would play two seasons in Philadelphia and average 11.3 points and 9.6 rebounds in that stretch; Clark would play three seasons and change with Sixers, averaging 18.2 points for the team, but failing to make an All-Star appearance with Philadelphia, though the Sixers would make the playoffs all three full years he was there; and Chambers would never play a game for the 76ers.
Probably not what you're looking for if you're Philadelphia and trading away one of the greatest players in league history, who was still in his early 30s at the time.
Finally, Lenny Wilkens would be traded by the St. Louis Hawks to the Sonics in 1968, the season after he was named an All-Star and finished second in the MVP vote to Chamberlain, in exchange for Walt Hazzard, who spent three seasons with the Hawks and earned MVP votes in 1969-70.
So, yeah, the Brown haul wasn't great, but history offers even worse returns for players who were better than Brown is today. There's also a caveat baked into this whole exercise. The MVP vote is a media award, and if this summer taught us anything, it's that front offices don't always see eye-to-eye with the voters in the media when it comes to rating players.
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This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: The Jaylen Brown trade haul looks bad. NBA history says it could have been worse