The Celtics are starting over without Jaylen Brown, and the move lays bare a problem the NBA’s new CBA has made impossible to ignore: it’s brutally hard to keep two super-max players together.
That’s the heart of the issue Boston is running into now, and it’s why Brad Stevens floated a tweak that would change the math for teams that draft and develop their own stars. In his post-Brown-trade press conference, the Celtics’ president of basketball operations said the league might be better off if homegrown super-max deals didn’t hit the cap so hard.
"The new CBA coincided with seven years after the supermaxes were instituted. We may not be sitting here if there was a rule in the CBA that said, 'The guys that you drafted that you signed for 35% supermaxes count as 25% of the cap,' because then that would allow you to build out towards the aprons with a lot less flexibility, or with a lot more flexibility. But the reality is that those are hard to build," Stevens said.
That’s the kind of change plenty of teams would sign up for in a heartbeat. It would especially matter for clubs that hit big on the draft and then have to decide whether they can actually keep the core intact once the money gets real.
Brown is the clearest example of what gets lost. Drafted third overall in 2016, he grew into an MVP-caliber player and became a beloved figure in the community. He is now in Philadelphia, while Paul George is in Boston, but the swap doesn’t change the bigger point: Brown is not replaceable.
The Celtics’ situation also points to a wider league trend. If the rules stay the same, more teams will keep trying to maneuver around the luxury tax apron, and more roster churn will follow.
Boston is the prime case study. After winning the 2024 championship, the Celtics saw their depth get chopped down, losing Kristaps Porzingis, Al Horford, Luke Kornet and starting point guard Jrue Holiday.
The issue isn’t just Boston, either. The San Antonio Spurs are the kind of team that would benefit most if the league changed course.
They reached the NBA Finals for the first time since 2014 and built around elite draft hits, most notably Victor Wembanyama and promising guards Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper. Under Stevens’ proposed setup, when those players come due for major extensions in a couple of seasons, a small-market team like San Antonio would have a much better shot at keeping its own stars.
For all the noise around fit and roster construction, the larger lesson is simple: the current system makes it hard to preserve elite homegrown talent, and Boston’s breakup with Brown is the latest proof.
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