Жэйлен Браун Бостон Сэлтиксээс үдэгдлээ

BOSTON — On the night of Oct. 18, 2022, which was opening night for the Boston Celtics, the pregame festivities were as much about looking back as looking ahead. Bill Russell had died during the summer, age 88, and now the arrival of a new season would have to wait a bit until somebody from the Celtics stepped out on the parquet to take a shot at putting everything in perspective.

The person chosen for that assignment was Jaylen Brown, then just 25 years old, an All-Star only once, an NBA champion not yet. Brown was already a veteran of six NBA seasons by then, and for the purposes of this discussion, though it’s stating the obvious, all six of those seasons were as a member of the Boston Celtics.

Brown laid out the usual resume/plaque information about Russell that night, such as his 11 championships in 13 seasons, and how two of those titles, the last two, were registered while the great No. 6 was player/coach.

And then, Brown said this: “But undoubtedly, Bill Russell was a great man for what and who he stood for. During the peak of racial tension in our society, he represented a type of nobility and honor that transcended sports.”

What perfect words. What a perfect spokesperson to go to bat for the late, great Russell. Now, I’d be lying if I told you I stood there that night at TG Garden thinking Brown was destined to be a Celtic for life, that he would put in his 15 or 16 or 17 seasons in the Green, maybe win three or four championships, and then settle down in the area, just as Tom Sanders, John Havlicek, Jo Jo White and other Celtics greats did. I’d be lying if I told you I took a cleap and envisioned a day when there’d be a Governor Brown, a Senator Brown, or that he’d open a restaurant in the North End or a Ford dealership on Guest Street in Brighton, just down the street from the Auerbach Center.

What I will tell you is Brown repped the Celtics that night in a way that would have made Russell proud, Red proud, Walter Brown proud. Heck, Johnny Most, the late, legendary Celtics radio play-by-play barker, would have lost his voice telling everyone, “Brown stole the show!”

I tell you all this so I can tell you this: Brown was a great fit for the Celtics, on the court, off the court. Yes, he was often precious about his place in the pecking order, especially after things fell apart for the Celtics in the first round against the Philadelphia 76ers, the very team to which he was traded on Wednesday. He had the audacity, if that’s the right word, to proclaim this past season as his favorite, which is rich when one takes into consideration that many Celtics fans use the pass/fail method to grade each season. Either the Celtics win a championship (pass) or they do not (fail).

Sure as shootin’ — as in 3-point shooting, way too much 3-point shooting — the Celtics did not win a championship. Fail. Even if Brown stepped up big time, carrying the team for much of the season while Jayson Tatum was playing his way back to Hall of Fame-bound status after crashing to the floor at Madison Square Garden on that evening in May 2025.

In the end, Brown played as much defense off the court as on, right down to chirping at Stephen A. Smith. And chirping at a television screen is time lost forever.

Since it’s been reported that Brown did not, in fact, ask to be traded, the question must be asked: Why did Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens make it? Yes, the proposed deal that would have sent Brown to the Milwaukee Bucks for Giannis Antetokounmpo turned out to be one of Red Auerbach’s old cigars that exploded in Stevens’ face. Stevens didn’t just play his cards badly — he dropped them all over the floor. What remained was a market of bare shelves, the result being that with one last phone call, Stevens pulled off the (literally) mean trick of making the 76ers better and the Celtics worse.

Using naiveté as a guiding light, it’s worth pondering an alternate history in which Stevens does not trade Brown to the 76ers and instead dares to step into a not-so Enchanted Forest in which the Celtics give it another go in 2026-27, with Brown and Tatum as teammates. It would have been testy, the chemistry all wrong, lots of feelings bruised, lots of whispers, and, sure, the result next spring might have been more or less what happened this spring.

But those Celtics would have been better than these new Celtics. They also would have been very interesting, if that helps any.

Jaylen never did anything to tatter those Celtics uniforms. Beyond a brand of activism that sometimes rubbed people the wrong way, he never got his picture in the paper for anything beyond basketball. As Celtics go, he was one of the really good ones.

That’s worth remembering as we go to the phone lines in the days and weeks to come.