The Boston Celtics have one of the best duos in the league right now.
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have the potential to go down as one of the best duos in basketball history once it’s all said and done.
Ironically, some analysts and fans actually urged the team to break that pairing up, asking them to move Brown to get a different kind of player and build around Tatum.
Fortunately, that was never the case, and the Celtics even managed to make it to the NBA Finals with their youngins at the top.
Notably, things could’ve gone completely differently for the franchise, as former Celtics GM recently admitted that he considered trading the two picks that turned out to be them to land Jimmy Butler:
“There was a situation where I could have given away both of those picks to get Jimmy Butler, and so, like that criticism is fair, like ‘you’re hoarding your picks to get rid of Jimmy Butler.’ I just thought it was too rich at the time, and thank goodness, we were lucky and that turned out to be Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum…You never know how those are going to work out, Jimmy was really good, and we liked him, and we wanted him,” Ainge said.
Danny Ainge talks Boston Celtics trades, and debunks the Jaylen Brown + Jayson Tatum for Anthony Davis rumors 👀 pic.twitter.com/FCfm6Tv8rJ
— Underdog Fantasy (@UnderdogFantasy) February 16, 2023
Butler was a rising star in the league back then, and the Celtics would’ve added a win-now piece to their core.
Instead, they held on to those picks and built around their talented youngsters, which turned out to be the right choice.
Jimmy had brief stops in Minnesota and Philadelphia before committing to the Miami Heat, all while the Celtics have been near the top of the Eastern Conference more often than not.
This is proof of why GMs usually rather hold on to their first-round picks unless they already have a championship-caliber core in place and a superstar is available.
Of course, drafting is far from an exact science, and you never know how a player’s career is going to turn out, which is why it’s such a complicated business.
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