Jaylen Brown Is the Guy I'm Keeping, NBA Analyst's Bombshell Take Is Against Boston's Conventional Wisdom

The Boston Celtics entered the 2025–26 season carrying the weight of an asterisk. They were defending champions, yes. But their franchise centerpiece, Jayson Tatum, was gone before a single tip-off. A ruptured right Achilles tendon suffered in Game 4 of the 2025 Eastern Conference Semifinals against the New York Knicks had removed the first name from Boston’s most famous partnership. And the question that followed was not just whether the Celtics could survive, it was who, exactly, was carrying them while he was gone.

The answer arrived over 71 regular-season games of startling clarity, i.e., Jaylen Brown. The 28-year-old, third overall pick from the 2016 NBA Draft, averaged career highs of 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 5.1 assists per game, entered the MVP conversation for the first time, and steered a retooled, stripped-down Boston roster; one that had shed Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis, and Sam Hauser, to a 56-win, second-seeded finish in the Eastern Conference.

The gap year never happened. What happened instead was a revelation. And then the playoffs arrived, Tatum came back at 80–85 percent of himself, Boston blew a 3-1 series lead to the seventh-seeded Philadelphia 76ers, and everything that had looked resolved in February suddenly looked combustible again in May.

Trade rumors surrounding Brown reignited within hours of the final buzzer. A Twitch stream added fuel. And a nine-year NBA career’s worth of questions, about Brown’s standing, his future in Boston, and his relationship to Tatum, demanded answers all at once. Into that noise stepped ESPN analyst Alan Hahn, with an opinion that cut against the grain of almost every running conversation in the sport.

1. Why Alan Hahn Says Celtics Must Trade Jayson Tatum Over Jaylen Brown

It was in this environment, a first-round collapse still raw, trade speculation fully operational, and the Celtics’ identity genuinely in question, that ESPN analyst Alan Hahn offered a counterargument that demanded attention. Speaking on ESPN’s Get Up, Hahn was pressed on a fundamental question facing Boston’s front office, i.e., if the partnership between Brown and Tatum were to end, which player would a rational general manager choose to keep? Hahn said, “I just want to make sure that what you said doesn’t go away. What you’re saying is you would choose Jaylen over Tatum if they have to choose. You would keep Jaylen Brown if you have to break it up. It’s Tatum that would be the guy that you would want to trade, not Jaylen Brown. Jaylen Brown is a guy that’s talking his way out of there, but I don’t think he wants out of there. I wouldn’t break them up, though. If you want out of Boston and all that money, you’re going to regret it when your career’s over. But if you had to make a choice — if you’re Brad Stevens and you’re like, ‘Look, I gotta make a choice between the two’ — Jaylen Brown’s the guy I’m keeping.”

2. Jaylen Brown’s MVP-Caliber Leap: How He Escaped Jayson Tatum’s Shadow and Led Boston

For nine years in Boston, Jaylen Brown existed primarily in dialogue. He was the other Jay, the co-star, the player whose value was perpetually measured relative to Jayson Tatum’s. The two were drafted in consecutive years; Brown third overall in 2016, Tatum third overall in 2017, and their dual tenures produced one of the NBA’s most decorated partnerships of the era, including trips to the 2022 and 2024 NBA Finals and, ultimately, a championship in the latter, where Brown claimed both Eastern Conference Finals MVP and NBA Finals MVP. Yet despite those laurels, the narrative around Brown remained fixed: he was exceptional, but he was second. The 2025–26 season dismantled that framing entirely. Even before Tatum made his season debut on March 6, just shy of 10 months after rupturing his Achilles, the Celtics were thriving under Brown’s leadership. Brown stepped up in Tatum’s absence, averaging a career-high 29.3 points and 4.7 assists per game on 48.3/34.8/77.5 shooting splits. He finished the regular season as just the third player in Celtics history to average at least 28 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists in a season, joining John Havlicek and Larry Bird. The individual achievements kept stacking. On January 4, 2026, Brown matched his career-high of 50 points to lead the Celtics to a 146–115 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers, joining Tatum and Larry Bird as the only players in Celtics history with multiple 50-point games. On January 19, he earned his fifth NBA All-Star selection and was named a starter for the first time. He won his first NBA Player of the Month award for January, averaging 29.2 points, 7.9 rebounds, and 4.6 assists that month. His PRA average of 41 ranked seventh-highest in the NBA for the season. More telling than any individual number was the team’s performance around him. The 2025–26 Celtics entered the postseason as the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference with a 56–26 regular-season record, just five wins off the prior season’s pace of 61–21, despite Tatum playing in only 16 games. Eight different players averaged career highs in at least four major stat categories, a full-team elevation that pointed toward Brown’s gravitational influence on every rotation around him. Brown himself was characteristically direct about what it meant. “Everybody was calling it a gap year,” he told CelticsBlog’s Noa Dalzell. “How do you go from a gap year to top five in the East? That’s a big jump. That’s not a small jump. People want to skip over that. I’m not gonna let you skip over it. That is a big deal.” The season validated everything Brown had argued about himself for years; that his ceiling was higher than his co-star role permitted him to show. But validation in the regular season and survival in the playoffs are different currencies, and Boston spent badly in the first round.

3. The $180 Million Contract Dilemma and the Giannis Antetokounmpo Trade Threat

Any honest assessment of Boston’s summer must reckon with the spreadsheet as much as the scouting report. Brown’s contract carries salaries of $53, $57, and into the $60 million range across the coming seasons, while Tatum’s commitments run at $58, $62, and $67 million. Together, they represent the kind of dual-max investment that the modern NBA’s luxury tax and second-apron rules punish with particular severity. Both Brown and Tatum are on max contracts in an era where the rules punish large payrolls, and it is very hard to build a competitive roster when you have multiple max players. Unlike last summer, when restrictions from being above the salary cap’s second apron compelled Stevens to reshape the roster, the Celtics enter this offseason on sounder financial footing, below the first and second aprons as well as the luxury-tax threshold, giving them valuable tools. Stevens said everything is on the table, hinting that adding rim presence would be a priority. Complicating those decisions is the shadow of Giannis Antetokounmpo. FS1’s Nick Wright stated on First Things First that he believes it is “more likely than not” that Brown will not be on the Celtics next season, citing the first-round loss and the availability of Antetokounmpo as the primary reasoning. Multiple trade scenarios involving Brown going to the Milwaukee Bucks or the Atlanta Hawks, Brown’s home state, in exchange for Antetokounmpo have circulated, including a three-way deal that would send Brown to Atlanta and Giannis to Boston. CelticsBlog acknowledged that Antetokounmpo, when healthy, is a better player than Brown, though significant concerns about his body holding up at his age, size, and playing style remain. Brown is also approaching his 30th birthday with three years remaining on his current deal, making $57 million in 2026–27, $61 million the year after, and $64.9 million in his final year — and he becomes extension-eligible this summer on July 26. Whether the Celtics offer an extension, and under what terms, will signal as clearly as any roster move where the organization believes its future lies. One thing that remains entirely speculative is what Brown himself wants. He has maintained publicly that this season, his best was also his most enjoyable. He has denied frustration. And he has done nothing to formally request a trade. The gap between rumor and reality in this situation remains wide, but in the NBA offseason, the rumor usually moves faster.

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