So much about a potential Giannis Antetokounmpo addition for the Celtics feels like a slam dunk.
Antetokounmpo embodies Boston’s need for not only a center, but Brad Stevens’ offseason mission statement of finding more impact at the rim and more dunks.
The Celtics need help at center, so why not acquire arguably the most impactful one at both ends in the entire league? There’s risk, but if there wasn’t, Boston would not be able to acquire one of the league’s best players. Period. At least not without gutting their roster. Yet the decision will still weigh heavily on the front office, and the entire fan base, as decision day nears on whether the Celtics will — or can — pull off their biggest trade ever.
That’s not an understatement. Despite a down and turbulent season where he only appeared in 36 games, Antetokounmpo just concluded a run of seven straight years where he finished top-four in MVP voting, including two wins, along with top-10 Defensive Player of the Year status. He scores close to 30 points just by showing up, reaches the free throw line 10 times every night and pressures the rim on basically ever possession. Antetokounmpo, like Kevin Garnett before him, would arrive in Boston squarely in his prime.
He’s the presence the Celtics need, and missed dearly, last season. It’s the kind of trade that could thrust them back into championship contention. And it’s an opportunity that almost never presents itself. The last former MVP to change teams was James Harden in 2021.
The last former MVP and Defensive Player of the Year to do so? Garnett.
In 2007, the Celtics had finished one of their worst seasons ever. Garnett formed a Big Three with Ray Allen and Paul Pierce, allowed for by a different salary cap and Boston’s draft standing. This time, trades effectively happen dollar-for-dollar, many of them star-for-star, and despite reports of the Celtics exploring how to execute a trade without him, they’re faced with parting ways with Finals MVP Jaylen Brown coming off a career season where he saved the team with Jayson Tatum injured.
That’s a completely different prospect than trading Al Jefferson and other rotation players. For whatever resistance some fans offered at that idea nearly two decades ago, there’s much more tied to Brown, a player who’s on track to get his jersey retired and go down as one of the franchise’s all-time greats.
There’s also the case that the known commodity, the Brown-Tatum combination that could statistically go down as one of the league’s greatest winning combinations, serves as team’s best path forward. Tatum acknowledged only reaching roughly 80% of his prior form in his return from an Achilles tear. Brown plays as both his complement and a buffer against any health uncertainty for the other Celtics star.
There has also been clunkiness with two scorers turned facilitators who overlap in ball time and position. While wide speculation always assesses their personality fit, they’ve made an awkward on-court combination thrive at times to the point of a championship in 2024. The strong, veteran cast surrounding them disappeared after the 2025 repeat bid though. Unsung players following Brown and Derrick White’s lead, and later Tatum’s, won 56 games and built a 3-1 lead in the first round against Philadelphia. The meltdown that followed remains as hard to parse as the worthiness of an Antetokounmpo deal.
Yet a return to form for Giannis in Boston could leave everyone wondering why we ever debated it. It’s no knock to Brown that Antetokounmpo, on many nights, plays the best two-way basketball in the league. He mans the front court position that faltered for the Celtics in the first round, a potential counter against Joel Embiid, Victor Wembanyama, Karl-Anthony Towns and other star centers Boston currently doesn’t have an answer for. If committed, Tatum and Giannis could combine for one of the league’s most compelling pick-and-roll duos.
Antetokounmpo’s noted admiration for Joe Mazzulla and reported willingness to extend with the team add to the intrigue of a trade. The Celtics, according to Sam Amick, would embrace a one-for-one swap. Milwaukee understandably would want draft pick compensation. Boston only has access to one of the No. 27 pick in this draft or their first-rounder next summer, and two additional ones in 2031 and 2033. By then, it’s completely unclear what lottery rules will exist. Giannis will turn 36, Tatum, 33. A multi-team deal could allow another team, most intriguingly Portland with its future Bucks picks, to compensate Milwaukee in exchange for acquiring Brown. Nothing has clicked, whether due to increased protectiveness over picks or less value being available for Brown than anticipated.
Yet despite all that, and the obvious sensitivity over another summer that Brown spends hearing his name in trade rumors, the Celtics haven’t said or floated that they’ve moved on from talks or that Jaylen is definitely staying. Perhaps that’s due to the limited market that emerged for Antetokounmpo, namely a Herro-led Heat trade that hasn’t successfully secured the star for Miami with two days left until the draft. The Heat continue to act with the desperation that leads most analysts and reporters to predict that he’ll land there, but an increasing price for the Heat will limit their ability to contend for a championship following a trade. That’s still the Celtics’ advantage in a Brown-for-Giannis swap. Tatum, White and the rest of the team’s depth would remain.
Naturally, play style questions would persist beyond a trade. Antetokounmpo, despite his center-like role on offense, dominated the ball in Milwaukee, facing-up, driving and drawing defenders to initiate the Bucks’ offense. Tatum and Antetokounmpo would both need to sacrifice on offense. The potential of a Damian Lillard-Antetokounmpo tandem in Milwaukee never panned out, and they rarely executed screen-and-rolls. It devolved, instead, into my-turn, your-turn. Jim Owczarski, a Bucks beat reporter, compared Tatum-Antetokounmpo to Khris Middleton-Antetokounmpo, rather than the Lillard letdown and Tatum is a far superior player to even prime Middleton.
The potential advantages for both are obvious. More pressure on the rim for Tatum to score from the perimeter. And fewer bodies and wall-building in front of Giannis with so many threats on the perimeter. Defensively, Antetokounmpo doesn’t reach the Defensive Player of the Year form from earlier in his career as often, and he sparingly played center on that end with the Bucks, so the Celtics still have some front court questions to solve there. Neemias Queta, for all his success in 2025-26, doesn’t space the floor like Brook Lopez and Myles Turner did in Milwaukee next to Antetokounmpo. Luka Garza showed some success in that role, but not at high volume.
Then, there’s the money — four-years, $275 million for Antetokounmpo due on Oct. 1. If the Celtics have interest in acquiring him, they’re inevitably prepared to pay that, albeit with gritted teeth after an injury-plagued season for the star and terrifying calf injuries to finish two of his past three seasons. While the bigger picture concerns over his availability probably became overblown, a freak fall doomed him to end 2023 and debate existed over his late-season availability this year, it’s a consideration given the physical nature of his game. Trading Brown for Antetokounmpo, just for Giannis to decline physically, would become an all-time blunder for the franchise.
To again compare to Garnett, the trade thrived in year one, continued into 2009, then a knee injury left Garnett diminished from his previous form, albeit still flashing effectiveness late into his Celtics tenure. Nobody lamented that deal despite it only leading to one championship. In this parity era, another banner would suffice here, too. And that’s the question, for all the sanctimony surrounding Brown and Tatum, that the Celtics need to ask themselves as a decision looms over whether to make this deal.
Neither the Heat nor Milwaukee should serve as considerations in it. Both will prove too diminished, even with Antetokounmpo, to threaten even the current version of the Celtics in the East. That’s no reason to veer from what they’re doing, and despite the agonizing finish to 2025-26, many successes happened along the way developmentally, for Brown on the way to his best season and for Tatum, who got back on his feet and resembled himself quicker than maybe anyone who’s ever torn their Achilles in the NBA.
All that matters and proves worthy of another look in full after an awkward re-integration for Tatum into a team and style that Boston played all year. The emergence of young and unsung Celtics still matters too, both for them and new ones who will join the picture this summer. Boston quietly became draft-and-develop stars in recent years, even if some of those players didn’t immediately translate to playoff success against Philadelphia.
But that loss matters, too. The playoffs are a different game, and for whatever reason the Celtics didn’t trust or utilize their depth attack effectively enough in the Philadelphia series — their strength all year. Tatum and Brown devolved into their worst tendencies, and despite having relatively full health outside of Tatum all year and entering the playoffs as the second seed, then building a 3-1 series lead, the 2026 group ultimately faltered.
Brown’s continued commitment to Boston matters too, and fittingly, he and the team can both assess their intentions ahead of his extension-eligibility in July. Brown should rightfully expect to receive his two-year max like any franchise cornerstone would. It’s unclear how the Celtics feel about extending him beyond the three years, $183 million he’s already committed to, when Brown is eligible for two more years at roughly $140 million. Inevitably, it’s not a massive cap difference between extending Brown and Antetokounmpo, with a two-year age difference. Despite obvious frustrations he expressed following the season, I’m not going to read into what Brown wants long-term for his career. He said on his stream that he’d like to spend the next ten years in Boston if he had his way. The Celtics and he need to determine if they can make that happen.
There’s no wrong answer here, until hindsight tells us later. With Antetokounmpo and Tatum, the Celtics would have two top-10 players who on many nights and even weeks at a time can perform like the best player in the league. Antetokounmpo is an MVP, a status that Tatum and Brown have bordered on, but have been unable to reach. Then again, Brown and Tatum have kept the Celtics in the mix for a championship every year, aside from 2021, since early in their careers. Brad Stevens has long held onto that fact as GM, that if they have those two, they have a chance. Will that remain the case this summer? We’re about to find out.
“He has not expressed those frustrations to me,” Stevens said after the season. “We’ve been here 10 years together and I do think, obviously, I love JB, and everybody around here loves JB.”
