The Boston Celtics new direction

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The Athletic NBA Daily 27 min 3 speakers 4 chapters transcribed 2 months ago
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Dave DuFour 0:00
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily for July 7th, 2026. I'm Dave DuFour. Here with Zena Keita and Jay King. Coming up, we're going to do a deep dive on the Jalen Brown trade. I got to ask Jay, what the heck happened?
Jay King 0:15
A lot. What a start. That is a very broad question. And in this case encompasses a lot.
Dave DuFour 0:23
Well, we're going to, we'll get to that in a second. Jake King, our Boston Celtics beat writer over at the athletic. Been a minute, man. You've been watching world cup, like outside of the Jalen Brown trade fallout.
Jay King 0:36
Yeah, so I've never really been a soccer guy per se, but there's not really a lot of sports on. The World Cup is in the United States, and so I've been watching it. The United States actually seems okay at soccer this year, and so that's pretty cool, although I have a suspicion that Belgium's going to knock them out.
Dave DuFour 0:56
We're recording this before the game, so no chance of a spoiler if you guys are listening.
Jay King 1:02
I'm a Belgian believer.
Dave DuFour 1:04
unfortunately oh interesting okay you're just a waffle fan i is what it sounds like i would like to see america win but i just there's also basketball world cup qualifying happened right now uh shout out to the georgians they came back from a 22 point deficit to beat spain as they try to get back into the world cup so uh dave i have a lot of respect for you for knowing that
Zena Keita 1:28
Well, these are my guys. Listen, he was a coach. I got to represent. I know. No, I don't. It's not just about Georgia. It's just like knowing that the World Cup and there's all these other things that are happening.
Dave DuFour 1:39
I'm thinking Wimbledon. Listen, Toko Shingalia had 37 points. He had five threes. Ridiculous game out of him. Legend. I love it. Legend. These guys never stop. Yeah, it's amazing. So there's a lot of good sports. I mean, I was watching Serena Williams play tennis last week. It's amazing.
Jay King 1:56
You came back just to get bounced in the first round. That's tough.
Dave DuFour 1:59
Hey, sometimes you just got to see where you're at, you know?
Zena Keita 2:03
That's fair.
Dave DuFour 2:03
All right, Jay. Speaking of, okay, where are we at with this, man? Jalen Brown gets traded to the Sixers for Paul George and, you know, two firsts, two seconds. That's not very much for Jalen Brown, who was just sixth in MVP vote, second team All-NBA. He's a Finals MVP. He's a Conference Finals MVP. How did this happen in this way?
Jay King 2:33
So there's a lot there. But the last two months for the Celtics were just kind of stunning to me. And the way everything went down with Jalen Brown – from they have a 56 win regular season. He's amazing during that. His teammates all point to him as like the leader, the guy who set the tone of intensity and who sort of, you know, gave them belief that they could still be great after losing half their rotation, including the injured Jason Tatum from the championship rotation. And... So they win 56 games. They go up 3-1 in the first round. Tatum has come back and he looks better than anybody really anticipated. And then they blow a 3-1 lead. And then there's like just small piece of drama after piece of drama with Jalen.
Jay King 3:31
Starting from that point forward, basically, his close friend, Tracy McGrady, came out and talked about how Jalen was frustrated with the Celtics organization. And then TMAC walked that back and Jalen said he would stay with the Celtics for 10 years. But it just started from that point on, there was just like... drama and weirdness. And then it all led to Jalen getting traded for a package that was, I think, very surprising to people around the league that a guy at 29 in the middle of his prime would go for such a small price and that the Celtics would feel compelled to move him right now with three years left on his contract. I think the reasons for them doing that, there were a lot. But it started with
Jay King 4:22
He was up for... Well, it started with their last two playoff exits. They lost in the second round. They lost in the first round. And I think if you look back at the team that won the championship in 2024... Like, they had an absolutely loaded supporting cast. Former all-stars everywhere. They were proven.

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