The Jaylen Brown trade was unprecedented for the Celtics, and other thoughts

Picked up pieces while wondering how many of you took the cheese on the “resurgent” Red Sox . . .

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Brad Stevens just traded Jaylen Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers for Paul George and four draft picks. And we are still reeling.

When do the Celtics ever trade a star player in his prime?

▪ Paul Westphal to the Suns for Charlie Scott in 1975? No. Westphal, who would become a five-time all-star in Phoenix, was not yet a starter for the Green when Red Auerbach made that deal.

▪ Cedric Maxwell for Bill Walton in 1986? No. We love Max, but he was never an all-star and was effectively washed by 1985 (similar to George now). Knee surgery shortened his career and he played only three more seasons after he was dealt.

▪ Danny Ainge to the Kings in 1989? No. A big talent and well-loved by fans, Danny was not one of the top three players on the Celtics team that traded him.

▪ Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to the Nets for draft picks in 2013? No. KG and Pierce were near retirement, five years removed from their championship season in Boston.

In terms of dealing away a major talent in his prime, there’s only one comp for this. That’s a thousand years ago in the spring of 1956, when Auerbach dealt future Hall of Famer Ed Macauley to the Hawks in exchange for St. Louis’ first pick in the 1956 draft.

Macauley was a six-time all-star, 28 years old. Brown is a five-time all-star who’s 29 and just finished sixth in league MVP voting after a career-high 28.7 points-per-game season.

So there. The Celtics have done this before.

But there’s a big difference: The return.

Auerbach traded Macauley (Red included rookie Cliff Hagan) because he identified the future of basketball in 6-foot-10-inch University of San Francisco center Bill Russell. St. Louis had the second overall pick, and Auerbach used that selection to draft the two-time NCAA champ who’d won 56 consecutive games for the Dons. Rochester had the first overall pick, but Red got Celtics owner Walter Brown to promise a lifetime of skating shows to Rochester if they took someone other than Russell at No. 1 (Rochester went for Sihugo Green in exchange for the Ice Capades).

So there. Dealing Macauley got the Celtics a player who won 11 championships in 13 Boston seasons.

Here in 2026, the Celtics just traded a prime-time, probable Hall of Famer and MVP of their 2024 Championship Finals victory, in exchange for a 36-year-old fading star (78 games played in the last two seasons) and future draft picks (one in 2031!) that could wind up being nothing.

Celtics Nation is in a state of shock.

“I woke up to a complicated world today,” 97-year-old Celtics legend Bob Cousy said early Thursday. “It’s difficult to understand this from a Celtic standpoint. I’d like to be in Stevens’s mind and understand what his thinking is. He didn’t really get anything for Brown to speak of.

“Paul George was a superstar but is on the way out, so this could set the Celtics back considerably — especially if Tatum is delayed with his comeback. There’s a lot of ‘ifs’ to this and it really surprised me.”

We are all surprised. And can’t wait to hear Brad Stevens’s explanation.

▪ Quiz: 1: Five active MLB players are within 20 homers of cracking the 400 home run plateau. Name them; 2: Name four Red Sox who have led the American League in errors since 2000 (answers below).

▪ Francis O’Bryant, a retired former court officer at the Middlesex County Courthouse in Cambridge and a Celtics employee since 1970, had this to say about the departure of Brown: “It’s a big loss to the Black community. In all my time, the players we had that did the most for the community, as far as being with the kids and gracing them and giving them opportunity, were Nate Archibald, Cedric Maxwell, Reggie Lewis, and Jaylen. This is going to be a big loss.”

▪ The WNBA needs someone with the skills of the late David Stern to fix things. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert certainly is not up to the task. Engelbert was roundly booed while presenting a trophy after the Liberty beat the Aces in a phony midseason tournament in Brooklyn this week.

Once again, it’s about the league’s “Caitlin Clark Problem.”

Only the WNBA could feature a generational, smart, talented, marquee player such as the Fever’s Clark and have things devolve it into a raging hot-button crisis that’s got many players and executives around the league afraid to talk about anything.

The latest Clark-related dust-up comes in the wake of Alyssa Thomas’s punch to the throat of Clark in a Mercury-Fever game June 24. Many of those who regularly watch the league claim that the WNBA is rough and that these kinds of plays happen all the time. Others (usually folks who see nothing but highlight clips of Clark getting ragdolled by opponents) claim Clark gets bounced around because she’s white and straight. It’s the “jealousy” theory. Clark is great for TV ratings and everybody’s salary potential, but doesn’t seem wildly popular among her peers. And it’s not just the UConn mafia, ever-jealous when the player in question is not “one of theirs.”

Thomas was not sanctioned at the time of her infraction, but one day later was tapped on the wrist with a flagrant-2 foul, a one-game suspension, and a $1,000 fine. She makes $1.2 million in base salary. The light penalties drew the wrath of Clark Nation, and soon we had Thomas becoming the victim — telling the world that she’d received death threats and an avalanche of internet hate.

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Meanwhile, there’s a WNBA 30-year anniversary celebration poster, featuring images of 20 important players who’ve been part of the league’s three decades — and Clark is not one of them. Some say it’s a licensing issue . . . just like Jason Varitek was “reassigned.”

The Fever resume play Sunday in Vegas against the Aces. No word yet on the status of Clark, who’s been nursing a tweaked back.

“They cannot have [expletive] this Caitlin Clark thing any worse,” claimed Charles Barkley.

Maybe Charles could take over as commissioner.

▪ Willson Contreras needs to calm down. He’s one head-butt away from becoming Carl Everett.

▪ Can any of you remember a Red Sox team with more Triple-A players in the everyday lineup? Every game has the feel of a late-March spring training bus trip across the state of Florida with disappointed fans moaning, “When we bought these tickets, we thought we were going to see the Red Sox major league team.” Last weekend — the best four days of the Sox season — Boston made room for the immortal Romy Gonzalez by optioning Mickey Gasper back to Worcester. How’s that for offensive depth? Gasper batted leadoff, second, third, or fifth in the majority of his Sox starts, then was immediately deemed expendable when Big Bopper Romy became available.

▪ If you want to boo Rafael Devers, the Giants will be at Fenway the weekend of Aug. 21-23. Maybe the Sox should have Raffy Bobblehead night. The Giants had theirs last weekend and Devers responded with two homers and four RBIs on the night of his giveaway in a 5-0 win over the Braves. Staggering through the worst year of his career, replete with more petulance, Devers goes into this weekend hitting .242 with 15 homers, 44 RBIs, and an MLB-leading 24 doubles. He’d still be a top threat in the Sox lineup. Maybe the Giants can trade him for Paul George.

▪ The Sox certainly sent the Yankees into a tailspin. New York dropped three to the Tigers after leaving Fenway, and went into this weekend with seven straight losses, batting .137 and allowing 17 unearned runs (10 errors) over the sorry stretch. Cody Bellinger and Cohasset’s Ben Rice were a combined 3 for 48 with only four walks. Ugh.

▪ Baseball draft guru Keith Law has Bishop Feehan graduate Brody Bumlia ranked 54th among amateur prospects readying for the MLB draft.

▪ I love my teammate Gary Washburn’s idea of bringing LeBron James to the Celtics for a farewell season and taking one last run at a championship. If that doesn’t happen, what about 41-year-old LeBron joining the Warriors alongside geezers Steph Curry, Anthony Davis, Draymond Green, Al Horford, and Kristaps Porzingis? It would be Golden State on Golden Pond.

▪ The Celtics should hire Ronnie Perry Jr. to work with Mitchell Robinson on free throws.

▪ Boston mayor Michelle Wu, speaking on WBUR Monday, explained the closure of Boston’s FIFA Fan Festival at City Hall Plaza last weekend, saying that Boston Soccer 2026 “decided that they didn’t have enough resources to guarantee that they could continue funding that event past the group stage portion.” It’s disingenuous of the mayor to position herself as an advocate for the Fan Festival, given the city’s reluctance to financially contribute to its success. Philadelphia, Miami, San Francisco, and Seattle are the US World Cup cities that have found ways to keep the party going.

▪ Amazing to me that nobody, not even ESPN, has a problem with NFL Insider Adam Schefter being a partner in the gaming and sports betting company Boom Entertainment with Patriots owner Bob Kraft. Schefter and Kraft both bought into the group five years ago. Schefter continues to break every big Patriots story, and nobody says anything. What a world.

▪ Strongest recommendation: Watch Netflix’s “Chris & Martina: The Final Set,” a spectacular new documentary on the personal and professional rivalry of tennis legends Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova. They dominated their sport for more than 15 years, played one another 80 times (43-37, Navratilova) and each won 18 Grand Slam singles titles. The stars overcame personal and professional jealousies to become friends, and late in life bonded while dealing with their respective cancer treatments. Just as the documentary was being released, Evert — who’d been scheduled to work Wimbledon for ESPN this year — underwent exploratory surgery and announced on X that her ovarian cancer has returned.

▪ After losing her first singles match since 2022 on Tuesday, 44-year-old Serena Williams sent a post-match statement to the media. Tournament officials said Williams was “not able to undertake” the standard obligation of answering a few questions. Weak. Serena was a great champion, and sells everything under the sun, but again this week reminded us that she’s a sore loser.

▪ Former Sox maestro Dr. Charles Steinberg, Sox interim manager Chad Tracy, Gene Zabinski, and Mark Fidrych will be inducted into the Worcester Red Sox Hall of Fame on July 23 after a noon game at Polar Park against Jacksonville.

▪ There’ll be a Ted Williams Camp silent auction/reunion luncheon on July 12 from noon-4 p.m. for the benefit of the Jimmy Fund at the Loon Pond Lodge on the site of the former Ted Williams Baseball Camp at 28 Precinct Street in Lakeville. Former campers and Teddy Ballgame-Jimmy Fund fans can sign up by visiting eventbrite.com. The deadline for registration is July 5.

▪ A child of the 1950s and 60s, I have been aware that Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard was from Derry, N.H., since my earliest days. Only now have I learned that Pinkerton Academy’s sports teams are the “Astros” because Shepard graduated from the school in 1940, 21 years before becoming the first American in outer space. Shepard died in 1998.

▪ Quiz answers: 1. Paul Goldschmidt (386), Aaron Judge (385), Manny Machado (385), Bryce Harper (383), Freddie Freeman (381); 2: Nomar Garciaparra (25, 2002), Edgar Renteria (30, 2005), Rafael Devers (14, 2020; 19, 2023), Trevor Story (19, 2025).

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