Not trying to be an apologist but I think in the regular season, it will be evident why Brad did this trade. It is not addition by subtraction because we?re getting Tatum back. But I think a likely scenario is that the Celtics still finish the season with a strong record and the other guys are able to flourish without JB.
What worries me more is when the playoffs roll around. For me, analytics is an exercise of how things will regress to the mean. And that if teams played in a 100-game series, you can confidently predict who will have an edge.
But teams play a 7-game series. And the trend over the course of a hundred regular season games may no longer hold true because a playoff environment is different. This is where I worry this trade might bite us in the butt. Because to be fair to JB, he was fearless in the moment.
I am hopeful PG can do enough to be 80% of what JB brought to the table.
Financially, as others have pointed out, there are no savings this year. However, the biggest difference for me is the Celtics do not have to extend PG to a max extension, nor will he warrant it. And so the team gets out of the obligation of overpaying for JB, especially if it does not view him as a max player.