Celtics

NBA insider predicts Celtics will break up stars Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown

Bleacher Report's Jake Fischer suggested the Celtics would look to trade Jaylen Brown and keep Jayson Tatum as the team's cornerstone.

Celtics forward Jaylen Brown (right) talks with Jayson Tatum during a game against the New York Knicks. Sarah Stier / Getty Images

By Khari Thompson

December 13, 2021

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With the Celtics dipping back below .500 after a 1-3 road trip on the West Coast, the whispers around the impending demise of the team’s young core have begun circling in earnest once again.

One NBA insider in particular suggests that the dissolution of star forward Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown’s partnership could come sooner rather than later.

Bleacher Report’s Jake Fischer recently told Sirius XM’s NBA Radio show he believes the Celtics’ slow start marks “the beginning of the end of the Jayson Tatum-Jaylen Brown pairing,”

“I don’t know if that will get broken up this season, but I think sometime in the next 12-18 months we’re really going to start to hear conversations about the future of Boston with Jaylen Brown heading out the door,” he added.

The rumors that a core led by Tatum and Brown simply can’t win a title reached hot-button status even in national circles after the team stumbled to a disappointing eighth-seed finish in the Eastern Conference last season (albeit without Brown at the end).

The Celtics' starting lineup with Jaylen Brown: +19.6 per 100/possessions

The starting lineup with Dennis Schröder instead: -18.6

(Stats per Cleaning the Glass)
— Tom Westerholm (@Tom_NBA) December 12, 2021

Fischer, as others have also suggested, expects the Celtics to build around Tatum’s offensive talents while using Brown — an All-Star in his own right and arguably the more well-rounded player — as a trade chip. The 25-year-old Brown has seen his name come up in trade talks frequently, including for star 76ers guard Ben Simmons, though those discussions have led nowhere yet.

Regardless of whether Boston opts to break up the dynamic duo that took the franchise to two Eastern Conference Finals appearances in four full seasons together, teams could be looking to the Celtics for assets if they can’t get things back on track.

The Athletic’s NBA insider Shams Charania wrote teams expect the Celtics to shop guard Dennis Schröder, who’s on a one-year deal with the team.

Other than that, though, Fischer remarked Boston doesn’t have much that excites teams other than Brown, which could make bigger deals difficult if the Celtics do plan to keep Tatum and Brown together.

“The early returns of what I’ve heard around the league, there is not much interest in the former first-round picks the Celtics have, from Payton Pritchard to Romeo Langford to Grant Williams,” he said. “Aaron Nesmith probably has the highest value of that group.

“It’s difficult. That’s kind of why they’re in the situation they’re in right now. They had draft pick after draft pick after draft pick that hasn’t netted them anything more than back-of-the-rotation-type players. They really haven’t developed anybody outside of that besides Robert Williams, and they are where they are.”