Brad Stevens Is Still Amazing
It finally happened – Giannis Antetokounmpo was traded. And it wasn't to the Boston Celtics. As it happened, I had to be up super early this morning, which meant I had to be in bed super early, so I knew it would happen last night (also, because the NBA Draft is tonight, and the Bucks telegraphed pretty hard that it had to be done by the Draft. Morons.). Also as it happened, as I came out of the house in the middle of the night to get the car packed up, it was raining. I wasn't quite excited enough to rip my shirt off, Andy Dufrense-style, but I did silently raise my arms to the sky. The Boston Celtics just avoided what would have been the biggest mistake since they hired Rick Pitino, and they did so in a way that cripples both the Miami Heat and Milwaukee Bucks. In short, Brad Stevens is still amazing.
Let's start with the Miami Heat. They now are incredibly top heavy, and have no bench to speak of whatsoever. Just like last season. Last season, on multiple occasions, the Heat built up early large leads on the Celtics, and the Celtics methodically knocked those leads down, because once Miami would go to their bench, they were dead in the water. It will be no different in the coming season. They will start Giannis, Bam Adebayo, Davion Mitchell, Andrew Wiggins, and if they can finagle how to re-sign him, Norman Powell. The bench consists of trade tax Bobby Portis, Nikola Jović (who's never played more than 47 games in a season even though he is going to make $16M next season), Pelle Larsson, Myron Gardner, and fellow Achilles surgery success story Dru Smith. I'm not being hyperbolic. That's all of the players the Heat have on their roster right now.
The even worse news? The Heat are now out of first-round picks, they're hard capped to the first tax apron (which limits all sort of things they can do in trades and such), and they have just $15.6 million to fill four roster spots. If they do some wiggling, they can create enough room to bring back Powell, and I expect that they can figure that math out, but after that, they've got relatively few outs. Such is the devil's bargain required to acquire a superstar when you don't send a superstar back in today's NBA.
Have you ever played a game of Twister where you had to reach over someone and twist your body upwards in order to do it? You can hold that pose for 30 seconds, maybe 40, but you're just desperately hoping that the wheel spins quickly and you can move to a less taxing position? That's the Miami Heat's financial position right now, except they're going to have to hold that position for at least the next whole season. Mitchell and Wiggins will come off the books after the season, but that might not be enough wiggle room to breathe freely, as they're going to have to lock in Giannis and Powell to long-term deals. (Three super-duper fun facts about Norm Powell: He's 33 years old, is going to command at least a three-year deal, and has played 70+ games only once in the last eight seasons).
The Milwaukee Bucks are now at least a half decade from being a championship contender. They can say that they got multiple first-round picks, and that's true, but one of the picks is in 2031, and one is in 2033. Those do nothing for them now, and there's a decent chance they will trade them if they want to contend sooner than that, which theoretically is their goal. The same can be said for at least Tyler Herro, and perhaps much of their trade haul. The Bucks could roll out with Tyler Herro, Ryan Rollins, Myles Turner, Jaime Jaquez Jr., and Kel'el Ware as a starting five next season, and probably not be much worse than 32-50 record last season. In fact, they may be better because new coach Tyler Jenkins is a better coach of young guys and disparate parts than is Doc Rivers. Rivers was (I'm saying "was" because I don't think Doc coaches again) a superstar's coach. Those are the players he drew the most out of. Role players and young guys was never his bag, and he was always up front about that.
Milwaukee seemingly has little incentive to go this way. There's a good chance they flip Herro (Detroit is salivating for a Herro-Duncan Robinson reunion) and really try to bottom out. If they do so, they won't even need to play their bench guys to tank, they can just play the normal roster and be awful. That might be OK if they controlled their own draft picks or had a clean cap sheet moving forward, but they don't. Giannis tore through this franchise like Godzilla tearing through Tokyo – he's going to do the same thing to Miami, and he would have done the same thing to Boston, which is why acquiring him would have been such a gigantic mistake. Not to mention the fact that he has, as I've detailed previously, hasn't won much of anything lately. He won the Milwaukee Bucks a championship, but he also destroyed the franchise in his quest for a second, and they'll feel the effects for another three-four seasons without some real magic.
Real magic is not for mere mortals though, and is reserved for wizard basketball executives like Brad Stevens. It's no surprise that when LeBron James, Maverick Carter, and the team behind "Hustle" needed to find a smart executive at the end of the movie to draft Bo Cruz, the guy they picked was Brad Stevens. The main emotions I want to convey right now are all the parts of the song where you just shout sounds: Mama-say, mama-sa, ma-ma-ko-ssa. MAMA-SAY, MAMA-SA, MA-MA-KO-SSA. HEE HEE!!!! Ra-ra-ah-ah-ah, Roma-roma-ma, Gaga, ooh, la-la. RA-RA-AH-AH-AH, ROMA-ROMA-MA, GAGA, OOH, LA-LA. The Celtics are a free bitch, baby!
Where was I? Oh right. The next time Brad Stevens sees Jon Horst and Pat Riley he's just going to stand there like this:
Let's get one thing straight right off the top. There's reporting out there that the Celtics upped their offer from "Jaylen Brown" to "Jaylen Brown and two first-round picks." No, no, they didn't. The way you can know that that report is total bullshit is the fact that it was reported, because the Celtics never leak anything. There's no universe where the Celtics offered two first-round picks in addition to JB for Giannis, because if they had, the Bucks would have taken it. Because that's too good of an offer, and anyone with a pulse knows it. This report is the Bucks wishcasting, just like last night when it was "reported" that they really like Hugo Gonzalez. Oh ya? Really? You like the best young player on the team? No kidding! The "two first-round picks" thing is Milwaukee trying to sell the offer that they did take look better to their fans, and nice guy that he is, Shams Charania is there to help them in this process. If you believe the C's included two first-round picks in their offer, then we should talk, because I have some oceanfront property in Wyoming to sell you.
No, Brad Stevens offered up Jaylen Brown and only Jaylen Brown, and he did it for motivational purposes. He needed to motivate Miami to give up everything not nailed down, and he did it to motivate JB. He's going to have a conversation with JB that is basically "no matter how good you think you are, you were not good enough to be traded for a true superstar like Giannis." And JB is going to use that to fuel himself to be better next season. In fact, he already is. Do you know what JB's been doing while all of this has gone down? Training with Olympic champion sprinter Noah Lyles.
All these people out here saying that the Celtics got too close to trading JB and that the relationship is irreversible are projecting, wishcasting, or both. The media loves a scandal, and they've been trying to create one between the Jay's for a decade. Jaylen Brown had to endure being booed on draft night. He had to endure Anthony Davis trade rumors. He had to endure Kyrie Irving big boy-ing him when he came to town, he had to endure Kevin Durant trade rumors not once but twice, and now he had to endure Giannis trade rumors. Through it all, he's emerged with humility and strength, and become a champion and MVP. This is business as usual to JB, and I firmly believe that he's going to come back even better next season.
And if he doesn't? Well, by keeping his powder dry, Brad Stevens has left himself options. Get Lauri Markkanen and save $11M? Bet. Rudy Gobert and Naz Reid? Maybe. Trey Murphy III, Jordan Poole, and Saddiq Bey? I don't love it, but there's probably some karmic healing to acquiring Poole. The point is, if JB has reached the end of the road and wants out – and I sincerely hope he doesn't, I want Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum to retire Celtics – the Celtics will have choices. The league will come to Boston, and Brad Stevens will be in total control of the situation. It would not be a Luka Dončić "thief in the night" trade, or like this banged-up Giannis trade. Twenty teams will want JB, because 20 teams have wanted him for a decade.
Last offseason, it felt like the sky was falling on the Celtics. They had a crippling luxury tax bill and seemingly no way out from under it. Instead, Brad Stevens proved once again that he is a wizard. JB led the team to an enjoyable 56-win season, one that culminated with him finishing sixth in MVP voting and earning a second-team All-NBA nod. Joe Mazzulla won Coach of the Year, and Stevens won Executive of the Year. Again. He's now one of 12 people to have won it twice, and he's only had the gig for six years. Not bad. And now that Giannis has been traded, Stevens finds himself in one of two enviable positions – either both of his star players will be coming back hungry and with a new legion of doubters to prove wrong, or one will ask out and all the eyes of the league will turn to Brad Stevens. Either way, he's going to keep playing them all like fiddles.