Bill Chisholm says the Jaylen Brown trade was ‘not about the money,’ but Celtics fans won’t buy that

NBA rules prevented the Celtics from commenting on the trade that rocked New England sports when 10-year star Jaylen Brown was dealt to the 76ers for Paul George and a bunch of draft picks last Wednesday. The cone of silence was lifted Monday as Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens and lead governor Bill Chisholm took questions for 45 minutes at the team’s practice facility in Allston.

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“We’re not up here to defend ourselves,” Stevens said in a 10-minute opening statement that used the word “optionality” several times.

The pledge was largely honored as Stevens admitted Brown was dealt because “the path looked a little bit more challenging to me with 70 percent of our cap — and such a high percentage of our usage tied into two players.”

Two players: That’s Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.

So one of them had to go.

And now Brown is gone: The man who gave the team 10 seasons and was MVP of the 2024 NBA Finals when the Celts won banner No. 18.

With this shocking swap, the Celtics said goodbye to the decade-long run of the two Jays. Making thing even worse, all the Celts truly have in exchange are two future first round picks (one for 2031!) and a 36-year-old former star who’s played only 78 games over the last two seasons.

“I keep going back to myself as a kid and I don’t want to hear about picks and ‘optionality,’ ” said Stevens. “Unfortunately, in my position, those things matter. That’s where we are … I’m not saying it was the right call.”

Does this trade make the Celtics better next season?

“We’ll find out,” he answered.

Can he see how this talent downgrade might be demoralizing for Celtic fans?

“I don’t think the team improves or doesn’t improve based on one player. Or subbing one player for another … I don’t know what you’re getting at necessarily.”

Swell. But Brad, can you acknowledge that it’s tough to convince fans you’re going to be better because of this trade?

“I’ve lost sleep over the fan part of this,” Stevens acknowledged. “I get it. There’s a bunch of No. 7 jerseys around. I’m pretty sure I’ve bought a couple. Somebody asked me earlier, ‘Do you miss coaching?’ and I said, ‘I do this week.’ This is not for the faint of heart.”

We can at least be happy that Stevens dismissed the mind-numbing notion that he had to deal Brown because advanced metrics indicate that Brown is simply not a premier NBA player.

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No joke, folks. A stat-driven theory that the Celtics were a stronger team without Brown became a talk-show talking point/social media storm in the days after JB was dealt for a bag of Spaldings. Nitwits who worship at the altars of Estimated Plus-Minus and the vaunted xRAPM metric (regularized adjusted plus-minus) convinced a sizable portion of Green Team Nation that Brown was an overpaid albatross that nobody in the league wanted. In this world, the Celts were lucky they scored a calcifying George and future picks while getting out from under JB’s massive contract.

Asked about the weight of advanced analytics, Stevens said they considered everything, but reduced the metrics to a “small piece of information” when considering offers for Brown.

Yay.

The most awkward moments in this depressing presser came when Chisholm made points that sometimes seemed to contradict Stevens. We applaud any Boston team owner who’ll sit behind a microphone, but Chisholm may regret talking about the departures of Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis, Al Horford, and Luke Kornet — critical, expensive pieces of Boston’s 2024 championship run — and stating “that was not about money … those are basketball decisions, and I put this one, you know, in the same category.”

The Red Sox got into trouble when they traded home-grown MVP superstar Mookie Betts to the Dodgers for Connor Wong, Jeter Downs, and Alex Verdugo (the latter two are already MLB castaways), then told us it was “a baseball trade.”

It wasn’t and the Sox have been pretty bad since the deal was done.

Technically, when you own a sports team, every trade is a sports trade. Under this umbrella, the Sox and Celtics can insist they are being truthful when they part with big-monied talent and tell us it for the good of the franchise.

Fans simply aren’t going to buy it. Not now. Not ever.

“It’s not about the money at all,’’ insisted Chisholm “This was again, trying to put together the right set of players and assets to win now, to win next year, the following year and the year after that. That’s what this was about.”

“… I can say it and I’ll keep saying it, but I’ll also prove it to you … When we have the opportunity, we’re going to do that and we’ve given ourselves the flexibility to do that. It’s fine to keep asking the question because I know we have to prove it and we will.”

“We’ll spend whatever it takes … the mandate is to win.”

There you have it folks. Bill Chisholm is on record. The Celtics do whatever it takes. Even if it means dumping Jaylen Brown.

It’s been a sad week in Celtic Nation. And Monday’s words didn’t make fans feel any better.

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