TO’s & Threes – Celtics Column 07/09/26
By Vinny Jace, Special to the15net dot com:
Saying goodbye to a franchise legend is never easy. No matter how many times it happens, watching someone who has been a fixture in your life for as many years as Jaylen Brown has feels like losing a limb. You live long enough and you start to associate them with moments in your own life: where you were when they were drafted, when they made their first All-Star Game, when they stood on top of the heap as world champions, and ultimately when they were traded.
Before the digital age, fans argued about their favorite players in bars and diners, face-to-face. It got heated depending on who you were talking to. With a good friend, you’d laugh, throw in an insult about their team or favorite player—or at them personally—once you felt you’d exhausted all your knowledge.
In an era where we’re all phone-addicted psychos logging every single thought into a public database, these arguments have become far more hostile. Anytime, anywhere, we’re willing to stop what we’re doing to respond to some smarmy Twitter account trotting out opinions and stats meant to convince us that a player we’ve watched since our teenage years is more a detriment to the team than an asset.
The two stats that best highlight this discrepancy are on-off rating and real-adjusted plus-minus (RAPM). The simplest way to explain RAPM is that it accounts for the quality of competition and tries to isolate a player’s impact separate from playing alongside a superstar who might be carrying the load.
— 0.0 RAPM indicates a perfectly average replacement-level NBA player.
— +5.0 means your team scores five more points per 100 possessions than it would with an average player in that role.
— Conversely, a -3.0 means your team’s scoring margin drops by three points per 100 possessions when you’re on the floor.
Of course, no statistic is ironclad. But RAPM speaks loudest when explaining why Jaylen had surprisingly little trade value and why Brad Stevens chose to bite the bullet. Despite a career season in which he nearly made First Team All-NBA (damn you, Adam Silver and your arbitrary rules), finished sixth in MVP voting, and led a Jayson Tatum-less Celtics team to 56 wins, Brown graded poorly in both metrics. His -1.6 RAPM and staggering -8.7 net on-off rating raised plenty of eyebrows. Other players who have graded poorly in RAPM help illustrate the archetype the metric favors: DeMar DeRozan, Carmelo Anthony, Bradley Beal. Superb scorers and isolation kings, but ball-stoppers on offense and defensive sieves. To win in RAPM, players generally need to limit turnovers, lower their usage rate, and reduce the volume of their shot attempts—things Jaylen has never excelled at with enough consistency.
This isn’t the first time the idea has circulated that the Celtics are better without Jaylen. Since Stevens took control of the front office in the summer of 2021, he has shown a consistent ability to surround his star players with depth to cushion any individual setbacks. The system installed by coach Joe Mazzulla turned the Celtics into a regular-season wins machine. Brown’s negative impact rarely showed up until the playoffs, and by then the team was drowning in so many other questions that the argument faded into the background.
The recent playoff exit cannot be blamed solely on Jaylen, just as the 2023 loss to Miami couldn’t be laid entirely at Marcus Smart’s feet. In both cases, Stevens decided those players had to go.
Stevens’ new approach has been dubbed “spreadsheet maxing” by Celtics fans on Twitter—the next iteration of advanced metrics waging war on the eye test. The reason Jaylen was moved so swiftly, while Derrick White (who also carries a large salary and his own flaws) was kept, is that despite White’s poor shooting last season, he posted an elite +4.2 RAPM and a staggering +9.9 on-off net rating. While Jaylen’s defense is good, it isn’t as multi-faceted as White’s. White can protect the rim at an elite level for a guard (98 blocks last season) while also averaging 1.14 steals per game. In metrics like BBall Index’s LEBRON framework, he ranked as the third-best defensive guard in the NBA.
Remember Paul George? Playoff P. Pandemic P. Playoff Piss. The guy you spent the last decade mocking. Even he graded out better than Brown last season. George posted an elite +3.2 RAPM (42nd in the NBA) and a +4.9 on-off rating with the 76ers. RAPM punishes turnover-prone players who demand the ball and struggle as primary creators. George presents no such issues. He functioned as a secondary playmaker, averaging just 1.73 turnovers per game compared to Brown’s 3.65. Much of Jaylen’s elevated turnover total last season stemmed from Tatum missing all but 16 games, but even in years when the Jays played together, Brown’s playoff turnovers routinely sat slightly above three per game (2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2025, and 2026).
Stevens is betting heavily that George’s superior ball navigation, team communication, and screen navigation will translate better in Boston. I don’t believe Stevens secretly covets George long-term. He is often injured, well past his prime, and his contract has routinely ranked among the worst in the league the past couple of years. Instead, I think Stevens made the best of a dire situation that risked becoming deeply dysfunctional. Jaylen had three years left on his current contract and was eligible for a two-year extension worth up to $142 million in September.
Jaylen Brown’s remaining contract:
2026-27: $57,736,350
2027-28: $61,672,814
2028-29: $65,609,27
Paul George’s remaining contract:
2026-27: $54,126,380
2027-28 (player option I’d bet my life he picks up): $56,586,670
Notice there’s no pressure to extend George. He’s a mercenary entering a situation with relatively low fanfare and expectations. Stevens stressed the importance of George playing a complementary role in his press conference earlier this week.
In the context of last season in Philadelphia, George performed admirably. While Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe are excellent young guards the 76ers should build around, they were caught between eras because Embiid and George consumed such a large portion of the cap while missing significant time. When George did play, he navigated a clogged offense and volatile roster extremely well. Lacking five-out personnel and consistent double-team gravity from Embiid, George had to create many of his 39% threes on highly contested, difficult looks.
Once you dry your eyes and step back, you can see what Stevens is aiming for. He viewed Jaylen as a luxury product who looked spectacular because Boston’s offense ran flawlessly around him, masking high turnovers and modest playmaking. George, by contrast, was a structural load-bearer—he stepped into a messy, broken ecosystem in Philadelphia and still elevated the team’s floor through shooting gravity and defensive disruption.
The dice are in Stevens’ hands. To win, he needs a healthy George campaign in which the veteran doesn’t miss large chunks of time or disappear when needed most. They don’t need him to be the second- or even third-best player. If Payton Pritchard takes another leap and Derrick White continues his elite production while rediscovering his jump shot, the Celtics will still be very good.
Vinny Jace is a special contributor to The15net.com.
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