Celtics Now Have a ‘Real Shot’ at Giannis Antetokounmpo With Jaylen Brown-Centric Trade Offer
The Boston Celtics were not all-in on Giannis Antetokounmpo last week. They are now.
Marc Stein reported Sunday that Boston has emerged with a “real shot” at landing the two-time MVP, with a Jaylen Brown-centric package that has Milwaukee taking it seriously. The trade timeline points to a deal getting done before Tuesday’s NBA Draft if it gets done at all.
This is the kind of swing that defines a franchise. Boston just made the Eastern Conference Finals. Brown is a 28-year-old All-NBA wing coming off a 28.7-point season. Sending him out for Giannis is not the same as sending out a role player. It is sending out a franchise piece for a bigger franchise piece.
Why This Works for Both Sides
The Bucks have known for months that the Giannis era was ending. The roster around him has been picked apart. The contract is years from over. The relationship with the front office has cooled. Trading him before the draft is the cleanest reset Milwaukee can manage.
Brown is the kind of return that justifies the trade. He is a top-15 player. He has playoff experience. He is signed through the back half of the decade on a max deal that the Bucks can absorb. Whatever extra picks and players get added to the deal would be the kind of haul that buys Milwaukee a real rebuild rather than the slow death of trying to compete around a one-star roster.
For Boston, this is the move you make when you are tired of being good but not the best. The Celtics have made multiple deep playoff runs without breaking through to back-to-back titles. Adding Giannis next to Jayson Tatum and Kristaps Porzingis would create one of the most physically dominant frontlines in league history.
Tatum-Giannis-Porzingis is a defensive monster. It is a rebounding monster. It is a closer-in-late-game-situations monster. The shooting math gets harder. The shot creation gets easier. The Celtics roster around them gets thinner. All of those are tradeoffs Boston is apparently willing to make.
The Miami Heat are still in the picture. A recent report gave Miami a 64 percent chance of acquiring Giannis. The Heat are pushing a deal that would include Tyler Herro, Bam Adebayo discussions, and some of the picks they hoarded after the Jimmy Butler departure. Pat Riley does not lose these races often.
The Detroit Pistons have also been involved in three-team conversations. Detroit has the assets to grease almost any deal, with multiple expiring contracts and lottery picks. Whether they end up with Giannis or just enabling somebody else’s trade is unclear.
What is clear is that the Bucks have until Tuesday to do this cleanly. After the draft, the entire league’s offseason calendar shifts, and Milwaukee loses leverage. Co-owner Jimmy Haslam set the draft as the soft deadline because no GM wants to walk into the second round of picks without having resolved the most important question on the roster.
Boston had the chance to make this move a year ago and did not. Now they have a Jaylen Brown that is a year older, a Tatum that is a year older, and a 31-year-old Giannis who is still the second-best player in the league at his best. Brad Stevens has the deal in front of him. He has to decide whether running it back beats reshuffling the whole tower.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
