Brad Stevens explains why Boston traded Jaylen Brown to Philly of all teams

Brad Stevens spent Monday morning explaining something Celtics fans still aren’t happy about. The team traded Jaylen Brown, and they traded him to the Philadelphia 76ers, a division rival. That second part stings worse than the first.

The Celtics president of basketball operations didn’t pretend otherwise. He acknowledged the frustration during his press conference. But he also made something clear. The offers for Brown just weren’t coming from out West.

Stevens didn’t name names. He said there were rumors floating around that weren’t true. What he did say was that the Celtics took their time with Philadelphia’s proposal, going over it carefully before signing off.

“These are not decisions you make in haste or rush,” Stevens said Monday. “I know a lot of people don’t think that, and I’m fine with that. If that deal came from a team in the West, you’d take that deal in the West, but that’s not how it was working.”

So the question becomes: what exactly was out there? Stevens gave the impression that Boston didn’t have a ton of great options. The 76ers put together a package that the front office eventually decided was better than the alternatives. And those alternatives apparently didn’t include any Western Conference teams willing to meet the asking price.

That part matters. Trading an All-Star is hard enough. Trading him to a team you’ll see four times a year, in a conference race that could come down to a game or two, makes it tougher to sell to fans. Stevens knows this. He didn’t try to spin it like it was ideal.

What he did do is emphasize that the deal wasn’t rushed. The Celtics turned it over in their heads for a while. They compared it to other offers. They looked at fit, future flexibility, and the kind of return that keeps them competitive now instead of rebuilding later.

Brown had been a steady piece for Boston, but the front office clearly saw a ceiling they needed to push past. Moving him to Philly isn’t the cleanest look. But if the alternative was taking a worse package from someone else, or standing pat and losing leverage down the road, Stevens chose the path he thought gave the team the best shot.

Whether fans ever get on board with that is another story. For now, the Celtics are moving forward with a different roster and a division rival holding one of their best players.