Boston Celtics fans can breathe a little easier about the Giannis Antetokounmpo chase. If Jaylen Brown was headed out the door anyway this offseason - and by almost every account, that looked to be the plan - then Boston came away with the cleaner outcome.
What actually happened was Brown going to the Philadelphia 76ers for Paul George and some picks, including the 2028 Los Angeles Clippers' first-rounder. What reportedly nearly happened was far more expensive: Brown, multiple draft picks, Hugo Gonzalez and Baylor Scheierman to the Milwaukee Bucks for Antetokounmpo.
On paper, Antetokounmpo is the bigger prize. He’s the better player than George and would have been the best possible partner for a prime Jayson Tatum.
But that doesn’t make the deal smart. Boston would have been taking on a massive amount of risk, from injury concerns to fit issues in Joe Mazzulla’s system, and there’s also the reality that Antetokounmpo leans heavily on his athleticism at this stage of his career.
That’s before even getting to what the Celtics would have had to give up. The package wasn’t just Brown and a few future assets.
It also would have cost Boston two young players in Scheierman and Gonzalez, plus multiple draft picks. That’s where the deal starts looking less like a swing and more like a potential trap.
Boston made the right call to hold onto those young pieces. Scheierman and Gonzalez obviously aren’t on Antetokounmpo’s level, and probably never will be, but they do matter. Both have already flashed enough to project as real role players for the Celtics over time.
That kind of depth matters in the modern NBA, especially if a team wants to survive a deep playoff run. Losing Scheierman and Gonzalez wouldn’t have completely stripped the roster bare, but it would have weakened it. And once you start sending out picks for a player like Antetokounmpo, the margin gets even tighter when it comes to building out the rest of the roster through the draft or future trades.
George gives Boston a different kind of fit, and one that comes without the same kind of cost. The concerns that come with Antetokounmpo still exist to some degree with George, but the Celtics didn’t have to sacrifice anything beyond Brown, and they also picked up draft capital while keeping Scheierman and Gonzalez.
He also fits alongside Tatum in a way that makes sense. George is a strong shooter, a capable playmaker and a solid team defender. He may not be the player he was several years ago, but he can still help, and he already knows how to operate as a sidekick and connector.
There’s another layer to this, too: George gives Tatum the ball and the spotlight in a way he hasn’t had in his NBA career. That should matter to Celtics fans. Their best player gets to run the show more often during his prime.
In the end, Boston was always going to move Brown at some point this offseason. A new deal wasn’t coming, so the Celtics had to turn him into something. Time will tell whether moving on from a homegrown star was the right basketball decision, but at the very least, Boston appears to have chosen the best available deal, even if that meant missing out on a two-time MVP.
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