← The Ryen Russillo Show
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, Priscilla. Listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify Prime. Members can listen ad free on Amazon Music.
- [00:08]
B
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- [01:14]
A
The Ryan Rosillo show is presented by DraftKings. Today. Real simple bonus episode. Me and Chris Bannix breaking down the Jaylen Brown trade. Win or go home. That's it. The cup knockout round is now and DraftKings has you covered for every single match. The DraftKings app is now available in all 50 states and includes all markets, bringing the game straight to your fingertips wherever you are. From Florida to Texas to California, you're in on the excitement at the speed of sports. Follow every knockout, round, thriller, every penalty shootout, every stoppage time moment that ends a nation's run. Sweat the matches that matter in real time with a seamless experience built for the world's biggest stage. No matter where you're watching, you're always connected and in the game. With one app. New DraftKings customer. Sign up with the code Ryan. Spend five bucks to get 200 in rewards within 21 days. That's code Ryan. R Y E N in partnership with DraftKings. The Crown is yours. An extra pod this week, Chris Mannix joins us. We're going to do 20 minutes on trying to figure out the root cause of the Jaylen Brown trade and the reaction therefore, of course, Mannix of Sports Illustrated in the Open Floor podcast. All right, I think there are bad trades I don't understand and then there are bad trades that I understand. So let's just start with you. I know no one likes this right now, but where are you today with having more information about what happened?
- [02:35]
C
I'm still in the same place where I don't think this is a defensive trade as currently constructed. Let's say if if this is all they get out of it going into next season. If they don't use this draft capital to go out and get another piece to this puzzle, then I still think it is one of the more inexplicable deals that I've seen in the most inexplicable deal I've seen since the Luca Donches trade. If we're being honest, mostly because I don't believe that this particular deal was going anywhere. I think they could have done this deal two weeks from now, two months from now. There was no market for Paul George. This kind of package would have been on the table from Philadelphia at any point in time over the next few months. The biggest thing I struggle with is the sense of urgency that the Celtics had in getting this deal done and pushing it through as fast they did. Given the return that they got.
- [03:50]
A
I don't know if I'd put it in the LUCA one. Can you, can you sell me on that?
- [03:55]
C
Since then. Since then, like, I think. I don't think it's Luca. I think that is the most inexplicable deal maybe in modern basketball history. I think it just was.
- [04:06]
A
Yeah. Not having any, like deciding, hey, I'm going to do this in secret with only one team and not even shop this guy around who's also a football player.
- [04:14]
C
But since. Since, since then, sure. And before then, I can't think of a deal like this that matches up in how head scratching that it was. I'm a big believer in the talent of Jaylen Brown. I'm not here really for the analytics debate. To me, championship, finals, MVP, 56 win season, all these things top any kind of numbers that suggest the Celtics might be better without Jalen Brown. I, I do think as to the why of this deal. I do think fundamentally the Celtics believed that the Jaylen Brown, Jason Tatum on court partnership had run its course. And I do believe they thought that there was a good chance it was going to deteriorate even further if this duo, this group was kept together. I do think they believed that the way Jalen played last year, the all NBA second team, the sixth place for mvp, that that was going to make it even more difficult for him to settle into the kind of role that he would have to play in for this team to be successful. So I think that's, that's part of the why the Celtics did it. At least from my understanding. I still don't understand the urgency when you're getting back a shell of Paul George who has played 78 games over the last two years. I've heard from some people in Boston that say, well, he looked great in that first round playoff series. Okay, well, that came after a two month league mandated vacation there after he tested positive for a banned substance. It's a little bit easier to look great in a first round series when you've got fresh legs. Paul George does not have healthy legs. Paul George is a jump shooter at this stage of his career. He's not a lot more than that. And he has one of the worst contracts in the NBA. So I, in talking to people, I understand why they felt they had to do it. I just still don't fundamentally understand why they had to do it this quickly when the return was what it was.
- [06:37]
A
We're in agreement on that. And I don't like the trade. Okay? So I haven't done a pod. I haven't done a monologue on all of it because we had already taped everything, all right? So I don't like to trade for the reasons you said. If this is what's on the table, then wait, let's get to training camp and see if somebody blows out an acl. I think you could even argue, let's see how it goes. And then maybe somebody else thinks it's better to go ahead and acquire him. But that becomes really challenging if you're like, what if the Celtics are on pace for like 56 wins and then you're trading Jaylen Brown in season? So that's a really tough one to pull off if it makes it look like you guys are punting, meaning the Celtics, you're punting on the season midway through the season. Although you could argue, you know, what's the package coming back. But if it's another team that's contending, they're not giving you one of their really great core players and the draft picks that then add Jaylen Brown, I mean, that becomes really complicated and like the rounding up. Then there's the element of like, do you bring this guy back in with his personality? My argument before, you know, it was after the Giannis thing, and, hey, you can't bring him back. Could you bring him back? I mean, like, look, he's kind of the same guy who complains and has this persecution complex, which a lot of players have, by the way, that he's always, he's had that when things are good. So I don't know, is it going to be that different when he comes back after some of this trade stuff? The other part that's crushing Brad here is there's a, a version of events where it seems like people are suggesting that Brad turned down Giannis for Jalen, but then did it for Paul George, where I think that's really, it's ultimately inaccurate because Giannis wanted Miami, his agent wanted Miami. Giannis's agent told the Celtics, like, yeah, but not really. And then we're not doing the extension. I feel like Boston was happy to drive the price up for Miami knowing that they're more desperate. But I mean, Giannis has already been vacationing down there and visiting the whole time. The agent played a major part in kind of diminishing Boston's like long term interest in this stuff because Miami was their first choice and it's this part of the process. It made sense for them to go ahead and do that. So there's a lot of factors, whether it's media members from Boston overreacting, freaking out about it, me watching the part of my take stuff where they've got a Philly fan, they've got a Boston fan with Max and Hank and it like becomes all this content. And so there's a lot of like other factors that are making this worse. But on the Giannis one, I think that's incredibly misleading.
- [09:02]
C
I agree with that part. On the Giannis one, I would disagree on the extension stuff because I think Giannis is signing a long term extension or would have signed a long term extension wherever he was, whenever he was eligible. Because I think Giannis and his team also understand the physical risk that he has right now. You know, coming off back to back seasons where he's had soft tissue injuries. If you're Giannis and offers on the table, whatever it may be, three year extension, four year extension, whatever he's eligible for, wherever he was, I think he was going to sign that. I think any suggestion that he might not have was probably going to be a bluff. Now maybe it was a good bluff. And if you're giving up, we agree
- [09:45]
A
real assets, he's signing that four year thing 100%. No, we agree on that.
- [09:49]
C
He's not, he's not running that risk there. Jalen Brown, the idea of him feeling persecuted is true. I think where it differs from other stars is that Jaylen Brown, it just seems like it's every year with this guy and it's not that way for other stars. I mean, you go back and you remember this Ryan from draft night when at the TD Garden his selection was booed by a bunch of fans that either wanted Jimmy Butler via trade or, or some of them wanted Chris Dunn drafted from down in Providence. Like there was like from day one, he has been feeling like he has not been fully embraced either by the city at first and certainly by the organization, whether it was the Anthony Davis trade talks, the Kawhi Leonard trade talks, the Kevin Durant trade talks. So I think he's got a reasonable. It should feel okay for him to feel persecuted. He's right to feel persecuted. Where, where this, where this veered off is that in the past, with all the guys we've talked about, it's been about those guys. It was about Kevin Durant in 2022. It was about Anthony Davis. It was about Kawhi Leonard. It wasn't just about offloading Jaylen Brown. This, these last few weeks, felt about offloading Jaylen Brown. And clearly that's what this was, because ultimately they took a package that does not make them a better team in 20, 26, 27, and unless they can use this draft capital to go get another player, it doesn't make them a better team moving forward. That's why I think Jaylen Brown is more upset now than he was all those years ago under all those different types of situations. You can bring yourself to understand if you're Jaylen Brown and you're being talked about to trade for Kevin Durant or talked about to trade for Giannis, but if you've got the GM of the team that is canvassing the league looking for offers, making offers, looking to get different things back in return, that. That took this situation, I think, to a whole another level and made it as toxic as it became.
- [11:57]
A
Yeah, I, I, I. None of us would want this to happen to us. It's very easy for us to say, hey, you make all this money. This is part of the job. You know, sometimes you speculate, and there are some players, too. It's like, just because some random Twitter account suggests you're available, it doesn't mean you have to shut down mentally and feel like the team has turned their back on you. I mean, your profession is that you're an asset, and those assets get talked about, and more so in this league than any other league, and it kind of comes with it. But this one was more, and it became far more public. But I'd say, like, Jalen does have, like, there's Kyrie fans out there. I was not a fan of Boston Kyrie. I was not a fan of Brooklyn Kyrie. I totally understood why he wanted out of Cleveland, and I had his back. Things have been really good now since he's been in Dallas. It hasn't been kind of the thing where it's like, when's, you know, it's been 12 months, like, when's Kyrie going to do something that hasn't happened? And good for him? But there feel like. I don't know if you'll agree or disagree, but I think there's been some similarities there with Jaylen Brown and Kyrie, where it's just not for everybody every day and it can wear you out.
- [13:10]
C
Yes, I can see from a personality perspective, I think the obvious difference is Kyrie didn't do anything in Boston, and Jaylen Brown did a lot. You know, Jaylen Brown, six conference finals, two finals, a championship, a finals mvp. That protects you from a lot of things. And also, like, I mean, Jaylen Brown. Not to sit here and just make the Jaylen Brown defense on everything, but, like, Kyrie does stuff in the community. Jaylen Brown does a ton in the community. Jaylen Brown, his off the court reputation is impeccable in terms of, like, kind of what he brings and what he brought to that Boston community, what he brings to communities, you know, nationally. So I think that that to me is. Is the bigger difference in that Jaylen Brown forged a strong connection with that Boston community. Jaylen Brown won for the team because they don't win a championship without Jaylen Brown. Maybe they don't get to the finals without Jaylen Brown in 2024. I do think he deserved better than to just be offloaded like he was some kind of toxic asset and to see his reputation drag through the mud. I mean, this is a elite guy with three guaranteed years left on his contract. Now, yes, it's a big number, but in today's NBA, if you're producing, it ain't that big. Like, from a talent perspective, it ain't that big. I thought he deserved a lot better than that.
- [14:44]
A
You know, Bobby Marks made a bunch of headlines when he said that a front office suggested that Jalen Brown was the seventh best player. And I talked about this already because I was like, look, Bobby's relaying that to us. You could argue that maybe Bobby says, this is so ridiculous, I don't even share it. Then it turns into something where even Jaylen Brown was responding. I completely understood why Jalen was upset, but what Bobby was really doing was he was going, hey, the market for him, and whatever you think of him as the player, because I think we are more aligned on the play. Like, I'd even said, like, whatever the analytics are. And he's never had the best analytic profile. The fact that it's this big wing that can get you a bucket when everything is broken down in the playoffs, that you can put him on a ball handler defensively, even if you're down on his on off stuff. And what it means team diffuser team defensive wise over the course of a regular season, like that's a real thing at this age. And I didn't really understand the urgency of like, well, he's going to want to get resigned. It's like, well, look, he's, he's under contract for three, like real years. Not team option, not player option, three real years. Like, you can probably just run this back and not have to worry about this imminent contract thing because it's not nearly as imminent just because he's eligible for this extension July 6th. But what Bobby was doing, he was telling the basketball world the market for him sucks. And when I had been told about a couple offers, I was like, oh my God, I would never do that. And then there's another offer you hear with teams that were involved in some of these conversations and I was like, this is awful. So I was prepared if he was traded for it to be underwhelming. I also think some of the other rumors of deals that sounded better weren't even a possibility. And so that ended up being Paul George for these two picks. And maybe the 28 pick is they get lucky with it. But I'm with you. I would have just said, if this is, if it's this bad, I'm going to wait. And Philly wants him so bad, they're all for the Paul George stuff. Like, is that the best you could do? So even if you were okay with this, which I don't think any of us are, sometimes it's just like, hey, if they're not going to come down on their price, then I'll go look at another house. I'm totally fine. I'm totally fine with doing something else. And it felt like Boston dealed from a position of we have to do something, which is usually when you lose these transactions.
- [16:57]
C
I think two things on this. I have not personally heard that the analytics of Jaylen Brown were giving teams significant reason for pause. I've read it, I've heard people like Bobby say it, but the executives that I have talked to have not made the anti analytics argument to me when it comes to Jaylen Brown. The the arguments that have been made to me is a couple of them by multiple teams. One is the concern that if Jaylen Brown is not happy in his role playing opposite Jayson Tatum in Boston, will he Be happy in whatever role we're going to put him in. So if you're a team that's a contender and you've already got a franchise player, like, is Jaylen Brown going to be happy being the 1A, 1B to that franchise player? There was some concern about that from the teams that I've talked to. Like just just looking at these teams, looking at it from the outside, saying, well, he's got a. Seems like he's got a great thing there. Like they won a championship a couple of years ago. They've been wildly successful on some level. He clearly wants more and he was obviously happy with what happened last year. As he said on his Twitch stream, that gave some teams that I talked to a little bit of hesitation. Like we've, we're trying to build something out. The Celtics want a player, they want a couple of first round picks. If we're not certain we're getting this guy, a happy version of this guy for the next four years, we're going to hesitate a little bit on this, the other thing. And this goes back to what I said at the beginning. This happened fast. This happened really fast. I talked to one team, not going to say who it is, but I talked to one team that absolutely made an offer to Boston for Jalen Brown. It's a good team. They made an offer to Boston and I got, I talked to this to a person in that front office after the deal with Philadelphia was consummated and they were stunned, mostly because they knew their offer wasn't very good. But they told me, this person told me that the offer would have gotten better. Like, that they were like Raptors testing the fence here. Raptors is not a hint. There wasn't Toronto, but they were, they were probing.
- [19:07]
A
They already moved there. Jaylen Brown, they already did their thing,
- [19:09]
C
but they were kind of probing to see how low can they go. Look, nobody's going to come at you with their best offer right away. Especially when the perception is that you're trying to make a deal and you're desperate to get out of there. Like, you've got to show people that you've got some stomach here. Like, you've got to show teams that you are willing to either go into the season with Jaylen Brown or that give off the perception that you do have other offers that you're going to. You've got to create a market for a player of this type. And this team person, this team told me, he's like, look, we made them an offer. This person told me they thought their offer was better than what the Celtics took anyway. But they, they told me they made an offer and if this had gone on a little bit longer, they would have beefed up that offer, enhanced that offer to make it a little bit better. This person was, was really surprised and I don't think he's the only one that was surprised. He certainly wasn't the only one that I was surprised. They were that the Celtics took Paul George, his God awful contract and two first round picks in exchange for Jalen Brown.
- [20:16]
A
One of the explanations that I got was if you look at Jalen and he just came in sixth in the MVP and if we get back to full form, Tatum, he's never going to have these numbers in that pairing and he'll have one less year on the deal than imagine. If you're running this back in a year, if this is how bad the offers are now, what's that market going to be like for him in a year? And it was a different team. So I was kind of pushing back because they were in favor of it and they probably don't like Jaylen Brown a ton and they were in favor of you can't bring them back, kind of a pain in the ass. He's going to be even worse with this. You might as well just move on. And the deals are probably going to get worse considering what this guy just did.
- [21:05]
B
I don't know.
- [21:06]
A
I mean, again, it's all of us trying to understand it, but that was at least one position that I was given.
- [21:13]
C
I think that, look, there's a lot of focus being on how this season ended with Boston. You know, they get to the playoffs, they get beat in the first round. It's a hideous ending to a very average Philadelphia team. But from what I've been told, the, the data points that the Celtics have been looking at have been more about the 2425 season, which was a good season, but obviously one that ended badly against the New York Knicks. Like to them, the people I've talked to, the warning signs that they were looking at were more based on that season, that they believed they needed some kind of change and that it wasn't going to get measurably better. I just don't know how you can do a deal like this and make a coherent, believable argument that there is a pathway to, to get measurably better. Like, maybe you're right, the offers weren't going to get better than they were right now for Jaylen Brown. Maybe, maybe you're right. I think you are, that the numbers were going to decline, that any tension that exists and the tension was going to go up no matter what based on this offseason. But any tension that previously existed was only going to get worse. To me, that still doesn't justify doing a deal like this for the kind of return that they got. Like nothing. Nothing. I've had kind of these debates where it's like, I'm hearing what you're saying. I get it, but I don't get it. And look what I do. And you can tell me if you agree with this because it's in the water supply, that bilchism is cheap and private equity sucks and maybe all those things ultimately turn out to be true. I don't believe that's fundamentally at play here. Like they cut salaries last year because they should have, because they weren't a championship team. And there are real basketball reasons to get under these tax aprons. I don't know how you look at this deal for Jalen Brown, Paul George and say it's a financially motivated decision other than Paul George has one less year left on his contract. They're still paying a pile of money next year and will owe a pile of money next year. That doesn't change because of this contract. So the one thing I guess I was convinced of in my conversations is that this is not financially motivated. But the basketball arguments have just been in and outside the organization have just been nonsensical to me and I don't buy them one bit.
- [23:52]
A
Enjoy your holiday, man. Thanks for doing this.
- [23:55]
C
You got it.