Philadelphia 76ers: Daryl Morey needs to press Brad Stevens on Jaylen Brown

Welp, if you haven’t heard yet, I have some #breaking news for you: The Boston Celtics have engaged in trade talks with the Philadelphia 76ers surrounding Ben Simmons.

… or maybe not.

But according to Shams Charania of The Athletic, the two sides have indeed talked on the matter, with Jaylen Brown reportedly the apple of Daryl Morey’s eye.

Should fans be surprised that the deepest seeded rivalry in the East could breed a trade? Yes. The Celtics and Sixers are sort of like the NBA’s equivalent of the Montagues and the Capulets, the Hatfields and the McCoys, or even the Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys, but as the 2021 NFL Draft showed up, sometimes two bitter rivals can set their differences aside for the sake of screwing over the other to get ahead.

Would adding Ben Simmons to a starting five featuring players like Josh Richardson, AL Horford, Marcus Smart, and Jayson Tatum finally put the dagger in the Philadelphia 76ers’ playoff chances and send them back to the Lottery for good? Oh yeah, totally; do it Brad Stevens. Even if playing Jaylen Brown alongside Tyrese Maxey, Seth Curry, Tobias Harris, and Joel Embiid definitely wouldn’t make Philly better than Boston in any way, it would at least strengthen Philadelphia’s playoff potency heading into an eventual loss to the Simmons-led Celtics.

*psst* think he’ll buy it?

The Philadelphia 76ers need to pay up for Jaylen Brown.

Who is Jaylen Brown?

Well, he’s a wicked smart vegetarian from Georgia who can speak multiple languages, took Masters-level classes during his lone year at the University of California Berkley, and even dabbles in YouTube ala his fellow Boston Celtis draftee Matisse Thybulle.

Brown is also a 6-foot-7, 223-pound combo winger who averages 25 points in 36 minutes of action a night while hitting 39 percent of his shots from beyond the arc and playing rock solid defense.

If you’re looking for an interesting individual to talk shop with over oat milk lattes, Brown is right up there with the best of the best. His father was a professional boxer, his cousin is A.J. Bouye, and he’s been invited to speak at both Harvard and Daryl Morey’s alma mater, MIT, on his vast and varied life experiences.

If, more specifically, you’re looking for a guy who can provide a riveting conversation over coffee and then average the 16th most fourth quarter points of any player in the NBA then, my friend, Brown is in a league of his own.

Though technically drafted first, two picks after Ben Simmons, Brown has always been the less heralded of Boston’s two Js.  He isn’t quite as flashy as Jayson Tatum, doesn’t average as many points, and didn’t become an All Star until 2021, which marked JT’s second stint.

What Brown does do, however, is play plus defense, as his RAPTOR rating shows, take shots from anywhere on the court, and score the basket in clutch time.

In the 11 games Brown has played without Tatum, he’s averaged 27.6 points in 33.9 minutes while recording 3.4 assists, 6.1 rebounds, and 1.2 steals per game. Though the sample size is relatively small, the situations surrounding each game are varied, and Brown was a -21 over that 373 minutes of action, few would expect the former Golden Bear to suddenly disappear if he was given an opportunity to be a team’s primary outside scoring option.

Will that ever happen in Boston? Not if Tatum remains the face of the franchise, but in Philadelphia? Well, Brown could fill a Jimmy Butler-sized hole the City of Brotherly Love has been trying to fill since 2019.

Actually, that isn’t true. Brown is 2,597 days younger than Butler and a notably better 3-point shooter too. Even if Brown doesn’t take another step forward offensively – which, at 25, is unlikely – he’ll still have a more complex offensive skillset than the coffee slingin’, minivan drivin’, country music listenin’ NBA aficionado ever did,  even during his prime in Chicago.

Which is probably why a deal likely won’t happen.

Does adding a playmaker like Ben Simmons to the Celtics make sense? Yes. Tatum has never had a playmaker of his caliber on the same team, and securing a transition dominant player like Simmons would add offensive variety to a Boston squad that feels too offensively one note at times to really hang with the NBA’s elite offensive units.  It would also elevate the team’s defensive abilities, which is really saying something considering Brown is very good on the perimeter.

Granted, the team would have to further build out the roster with shooters around Simmons, as they currently deploy a ton of Josh Richardson-types who play strong defense around a pair of elite scorers, but that isn’t nearly as hard as secure superstar talent, as Morey will tell you firsthand.

Such a deal won’t happen because the Celtics would have to admit they aren’t quite good enough to reach the NBA’s ultimate prize.

That’s hard.

For every team like the Toronto Raptors who move on from their best player and COTY winning coach in the hopes of winning the ultimate prize, you see dozens of really good teams who roll with their core and hope everything breaks right to secure an improbable win. The Sixers clearly don’t want to fall into that category, which is why they’ve been so forthright in their search to upgrade their second star and why they would accept Brown back in a deal for Simmons, even if it required giving up additional assets to get a deal done.

Brad Stevens, the Celtics’ GM, knows firsthand what it’s like to coach Brown and Tatum and how they play off of each other. He knows their tendencies, who they like to hang out with on road trips, and whether their relationship is a marriage of convenience or genuine admiration. If he ships away Brown, even for a package of Simmons, a player like Isaiah Joe or Shake Milton, and a pair of first-round picks, he will surely draw incredible ire from fans all over New England, but if he genuinely believes that that duo can’t win it all together, would he take a chance doing so with Simmons as his 1B instead? Would he have the courage to hold that strong to his convictions?

Only time will tell. With Brown out for the next 10-ish days, Boston will have a perfect opportunity to evaluate how Tatum looks without his fellow All-Star and see if pairing him with an elite playmaker would fix the team’s current woes. If Tatum looks fixed without Brown – which has historically been the case – and then that momentum hits a wall when he returns, the malcontent in the locker room may continue to grow.

Considering Morey’s history of taking advantage of disfunction for his own benefit, the more the Celtics struggle, the more he should be on the phone with his Beantown counterpart.

In Doc Rivers’ offense, Jaylen Brown would be a perennial All-Star. He’d be the sort of Paul George/Paul Pierce-sequel big wing who can score from anywhere and provide considerable effort on the defensive end, and serve as the perfect fourth quarter foil for Joel Embiid regardless of the score. Free from playing alongside a similarly skilled fellow forward who needs a to operate in the same general way- think Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid in the paint – Brown could reach his fullest potential as a member of the Philadelphia 76ers in the same way Ben Simmons could in Boston. It’s just too bad a deal likely won’t happen, even if Daryl Morey was willing to attach the requisite assets needed to theoretically shift a deal’s balance into Boston’s favor.