The Boston Celtics‘ 2025-26 season ended on a terrible note, but they had done a lot of good prior to that. The Celtics smashed preseason expectations by finishing with a 56-26 record, and it was Jaylen Brown who got much of the credit for that.
It turns out, though, that the Celtics didn’t see things that way. After Brown was stunningly traded to the Philadelphia 76ers for an underwhelming haul, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported on his Hoop Collective podcast that the team felt Derrick White was better last season.
“Even though Jaylen Brown was talking about himself for MVP or there was this MVP campaign for Jaylen Brown, the Celtics did not feel that Jaylen had the best season on their team,” Windhorst said. “And I don’t mean Jayson Tatum… They felt that Derrick White had a better season… The statistics that people used to analyze said that.”
Now, this is despite White, who made the All-Defensive First Team, having a horrendous shooting season. The 32-year-old averaged 16.5 points, 4.4 rebounds, 5.4 assists, 1.1 steals, and 1.3 blocks per game, but shot 39.4% from the field and 32.7% from beyond the arc.
Brown, on the other hand, averaged 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds, 5.1 assists, 1.0 steals, and 0.4 blocks per game, and shot 47.7% from the field and 34.7% from beyond the arc. There is only one winner here if you’re looking at the raw numbers.
It’s when you start looking deeper, though, that things start to change. Analytics will tell you Brown isn’t as good a player as the raw numbers suggest he is. ESPN’s Bobby Marks had revealed last week that an analytics person said they view the five-time All-Star as the seventh-best player on a team.
Brown understandably took offense to that and ripped analytics. Unfortunately for the 29-year-old, front offices do go by it. While we don’t know specifically what metrics were looked at, one that has been floated around and was brought up in the podcast is on-off. According to Databallr, Brown had a -6.2 rating last season while White was +6.8. It’s a no-contest.
Now, even if the Celtics do think White was more impactful than Brown, why trade him for such a haul now? They only got Paul George, a 2028 first-round pick, a 2031 first-round pick, a 2028 second-round pick, and a 2030 second-round pick.
The Celtics could have just stood pat for another month or so to see if a better offer came along. There was no need to make the move now, as Brown had not handed in a trade request. He is not hurting the team’s chemistry in any way, either, as the players aren’t together at the moment. Training camp starts at the end of September, so they could have waited.
It’s hard to see a scenario where we look back at this trade as a good one for the Celtics. The last time a team was universally criticized for a trade was when the Dallas Mavericks sent Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers. Brown isn’t anywhere near as good as Doncic, but some heads might roll in Boston a year from now, as was the case in Dallas.
