Celtics swingman Jaylen Brown thought the team wouldn’t budge from its original $80MM extension offer before the front office substantially sweetened the pot, he told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski on the Woj Pod (hat tip to Nick Goss of NBC Sports Boston). Brown eventually signed a four-year, $115MM rookie scale extension, which included a guaranteed $103MM and another $12MM in incentives.
“To be honest, I came with the mindset I didn’t think that anything was going to get done,” Brown told Wojnarowski. “I wasn’t sure that anything was going to get done. The first offer was four years, $80 million. I didn’t think they were going to budge from that. So, I came with the mindset, I told (agent Jason) Glushon that, ‘Let’s see what can happen, you know?’ For me, I didn’t think Jason was going to be able to get anything done. I thought they were going to stay at ($80MM) and that was going to be it.”
Without an extension, Brown would have plunged into restricted free agency this summer. He was fully prepared to do that until the offer grew.
“I was hell-bent, I was already locked in, focused, ready to carry the weight that I was going to go into this year playing my fourth year out. And then they jumped up, and that just showed they wanted me here in the organization,” he said on the podcast. “They appreciated my value. They thought that I added to winning. It was an offer that was too hard to kind of turn down.”
Brown was averaging a career-high 20 PPG, 6.9 RPG and 2.3 APG heading into the team’s game against the Lakers on Monday.
Looking at it know someone would definitely offer him a max this offseason but in reality he’s probably worth more like 25mil a year so I think 4y/100m would’ve been a better offer. Rather than the 115m gets agreed to now
Agree. Totally overpaid.
How do you figure? The dude’s averaging 20/7 and is just 23 years old… explain to me how he’s “totally overpaid”
Because GMs care about winning basketball games instead of who gets what numbers? Or are you about to put a guy like Michael Beasley in the same group as Brown since he too could score 20+ points if given a boatload of minutes?
Anyway, the bottom line is that Brown has improved quite a bit this season, and if he continues on this trajectory the contract he signed may turn out to be a bargain. No point in judging his contract so soon.
JB is improving every day, just ask LeBron, who he posterized last night! He will evolve into a max player within a year. It was a very shrewd deal by Ainge! An absolute bargain.
$103m
The guarantee is only $103M and as you stated yourself… someone would’ve offered him more and then they’d have had to match the max deal or let him walk for nothing — so this was definitely the best case outcome for the C’s. And the way he’s been playing this season – it’s hard to even make a case that he’s not worth it. 20PPG/7RPG is definitely worth 4/$103
Well I guess you could say the Celtics we’re betting against themselves with the nice incentives, if that’s the deciding factor for whether the contract is an overpay or not then I’d say there’s probably enough ambiguity to make the case either way. I wish when I’m more inclined to say market value rather than that makes the case for it being a bargain or an albatross.
He’ll be taking about 17% of the salary which is just above 1/6. It’s more than we’re accustomed to seeing but it stands to reason to be fair based on market and production. I thought it was a very aggressive overpay, considering Brown’s previous production. Based on having 6 Jaylen Browns on a team, I think move teams would be content with that.
Hmm still unsure on Celtics direction having maxed Walker, paid Brown 25+ mil, paying Hayward 30mil and still have to pay for Tatum.
The biggest need for this team is a centre that rebounds well and with all this cap space tied up its had to imagine them fixing that issue well. Between Hayward Brown and Tatum they are all SFs that thrive as scorers, most teams when rebuilding build at various positions.
I did have doubts about Brown but he’s been great this year, I always liked Tatum and thought he was the centre piece, I was unsure on maxing Walker at 29, and Hayward’s injury was unfortunate but even then they chose to do that a month after they signed Tatum. Why didn’t they offer money to Millsap, Ibaka or Griffin ??
Browns been solid, simply doing what he shouldve and likely wouldve done last year if not for heyward getting worked back into the rotation. The signings been solid. Plenty of gambles get made all the time in RFA, at the time it looked high, but when guys like otto Porter and aaron gordon make what they do,then brown getting between 22-28mil per year over 4 years makes sense