ESPN’s Brian Windhorst: Celtics are “Very Motivated” to Trade Jaylen Brown

Rich asked Brian Windhorst the sports-talk-radio question: who is more likely to end up on another team, Jaylen Brown or Kawhi Leonard? Windhorst, who never says never, still pointed his read at one of them.

Brown and the Celtics staying together is not impossible, Windhorst said, but it is highly unlikely. He is not in the Boston offices, so he would not state it as fact, but he has heard the Celtics attached to many, many teams. He declined to put a number on the asking price, joking that if he did, he would then have to defend that number.

The tell, for Windhorst, was last week. Focus on actions, he said. The Celtics were trying to trade for Giannis Antetokounmpo. If you are willing to move Jaylen Brown for Giannis, you are intending to win the championship this year, which is no surprise. Boston has been trying to win a title every year for most of the last decade.

What changed his read was the shape of the deals he is now hearing about. Secondhand, the conversations he has been told about are draft-pick heavy. Windhorst said he has heard the Celtics asking for three, four, five first-round picks in exchange for Brown.

That detail is what moves the needle for him. "You don't take an All-NBA player and trade him for primarily draft picks and say we're going to be the same team," he explained. A week after chasing Giannis to win now, seeking a pick-heavy return suggests a team looking at a different, shorter-term future, one that is no longer built around contending this season.

Windhorst left room for the alternative. Maybe there is a middle-term plan, where Boston banks those picks and flips them later for another star. That can happen. And it does not mean the Celtics will not trade Brown for solid players who help them win now instead.

But the combination tells him two things. First, that Boston is very motivated to move Brown. Second, that the team is operating a little bit outside its usual plan. Because, as Windhorst put it, the plan seems to have changed.