Time to let loose on the Celtics satisfying a desire to offload Jaylen Brown, and other pent-up thoughts

Sharing pent-up thoughts from my six-week medical leave for prostate cancer surgery while wondering if the Red Sox shifted the energy as an homage to Jaylen Brown:

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⋅ It still feels like an important piece of the logic puzzle is missing from the Celtics decision to trade Brown to the rival 76ers for aging “star” Paul George, two first-round picks, and two second-rounders. The only way it makes sense is if the Celtics believe it’s addition by subtraction, benefiting Jayson Tatum and coach Joe Mazzulla. Of course, baby-faced assassin hoops boss Brad Stevens isn’t going to say that. It diminishes Brown as a player and adored contributor to the community. Plus, it damages the reputation of the organization with NBA players.

Given the level of exigency the Celtics operated with in shopping their longest-tenured player after the best season of his career, it’s clear in hindsight that their pursuit of Giannis Antetokounmpo wasn’t actually about Giannis. It was camouflaging the Celtics’ desire to offload the iconoclastic Brown as quickly as possible, as discreetly as possible, for value that wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. Normally imperturbable, Stevens looked squirrelly and chagrined the night of the first round of the NBA Draft, after Milwaukee chose Miami’s offer for Giannis and the Celtics steward was forced to tap dance on Brown’s future.

At the Celtics Inquisition, Stevens lamented how it was challenging to have 70 percent of your cap space tied up in two players.

Well, the Celtics remain so with the 36-year-old, injury-prone George, one of the great playoff underperformers of his generation, saddled with the derisive sobriquet “Playoff P” and with a $56.5 million player option for 2027-28.

Stevens rebutted this by pointing out the Celtics now have more draft capital — a 2028 first-round pick with complicated provisions that could land in the top eight, or in a very remote scenario, not be conveyed at all, and a 2031 unprotected first-rounder from Philly.

That rationale fails to factor in the opportunity cost of potentially wasting two years of Tatum’s prime with a lesser team and a lesser running mate in George, who has played more than 57 games in a regular season just once this decade.

From a pure basketball standpoint, it would’ve made more sense to reunite Brown and Tatum, then sell off Brown when teams are more desperate — either at the trade deadline or next summer, when a frustrated superstar threatening to demand a trade (say Nikola Jokić) upped the Celtics’ leverage.

But this wasn’t a pure basketball decision.

▪ The resuscitated Red Sox provided the feel-good story of the summer with their team-record-tying 15-game winning streak. They’re serving a reverse 1978. Morgan Magic meet Tracy Sorcery. The turnaround is remarkable, but is it long-term sustainable? Does it fit into the category of the sustainability pledge the Red Sox have been preaching this decade? No.

Claiming that would be simple if the inspired stretch were underpinned by performances from celebrated prospects Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, and Kristian Campbell.

Give chief baseball officer Craig Breslow credit: He nailed the pitching and defense hallelujah chorus. Run Prevention 2.0 isn’t a racket. But the Sox spurt coincided with the injury exit of Mayer and his sub-.600 OPS, and the insertion into the lineup of bench players/4A types Anthony Seigler, Andruw Monasterio, Tsung-Che Cheng, and last year’s patron saint, Romy Gonzalez. It helped enormously that Caleb Durbin morphed into Adrian Beltre.

The Sox did something similar last year with deposed manager Alex Cora, Gonzalez, Abraham Toro, Rob Refsnyder, Nathaniel Lowe, etc., to secure a playoff berth. Breslow declared the team’s window of contention open, but the Sox went splat to start this season. There’s a difference between a blueprint and a patch job.

▪ Everybody loves Derrick White. How can you not? But he’s skating like few athletes in Boston sports history after an abysmal playoff performance that was one of the leading causes of the Celtics’ first-round playoff implosion against Philadelphia. Those in Greenlandia tend to venerate role players, but paradoxically assign virtually zero accountability to the same basketball binkies in failure.

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When the Celtics blew a 13-point lead in the second half of Game 5 at the Garden, White was a team-worst minus-20. (Brown was minus-16, Tatum minus-15.) In the blowout loss in Game 6, White was a team-worst minus-25. In Game 7, he played a splendid first half, scoring 19 points, but disintegrated with the series and the season on the line, shooting 3 for 13 and 1 of 9 from 3-point range in the second half while registering a minus-4. For the series in the fourth quarter, White shot 29.4 percent and 27.3 percent from three, matching his overall 3-point mark for the series.

Yet, the team rebuffed reported “aggressive” trade offers for the 32-year-old White while peddling Brown, an All-NBA talent, like a scuffed-up piece of furniture on Facebook Marketplace.

▪ I’m not an artificial intelligence-averse troglodyte, but the tyranny of analytics in evaluating sports has become intolerable. Yes, analytics are more objective than the eye test. However, they’re not without bias. Analytics prioritize efficiency over production. Efficiency is ideal, but not necessarily essential in basketball, where more than 200 points and 100-plus possessions are routine.

Analytics ignore outcomes to emphasize value and process, i.e., Mazzulla claiming all the 3-pointers the Celtics take when they lose are good shots. Or delusional Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson contuining the emphasize his team was up, 2-1, vs. the Knicks in the Eastern Conference finals, according to expected score analytics, when it was down, 0-3.

There’s definitely value in analytics, but don’t treat them as infallible gospel.

▪ While the revivified Red Sox have rewritten the story of their season, let’s not subscribe to the revisionist history that this only could’ve happened by sacking Cora and most of the Red Sox coaching staff after a 10-17 start.

If Cora, who identified Monasterio as an asset in spring training, had been able to go with grit guys, too, he could’ve engineered this type of turnaround. Other than the streaky Durbin, there’s no one producing at the plate now who hadn’t previously produced under Cora. Canning Cora and his coaches was still hasty and recriminatory. Correlation is not causation, nor justification.

▪ Patriots coach Mike Vrabel distanced and differentiated his program from the Dynasty Days, but it will be interesting to see if he shares one belief in common with his old coach — the idea that having a highly paid lockdown cornerback is a luxury. Belichick enjoyed Ty Law, Darrelle Revis, and Stephon Gilmore. He also wasn’t afraid to let them go, believing he could compensate with coaching and scheme.

That philosophy wouldn’t bode well for Christian Gonzalez in his quest for a new contract. I’m not sold the Patriots genuinely believe having Gonzalez in the Foxborough fold is a non-negotiable for Super Bowl success.

▪ The World Cup showed we can do big events in Boston. The Tartan Army taught us that traffic cones can be a symbol of joy and revelry. No longer should NIMBY-ism be our default stance.

▪ It’s uncanny how adept Breslow, a former lefthanded reliever, is at identifying lefthanded pitchers. The latest is rookie Jake Bennett, who has been a revelation in the rotation. It makes you wonder if Breslow shops at the real-life Leftorium.

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