When do we address the elephant in the room?
We didn't hear a peep out of Tatum when his brother was getting dragged through the mud by everybody with access to a microphone. And when Jaylen was handing out his goodbyes, somebody's name was conspicuously absent.
I think that's your smoking gun. Not Brad. Not even Chisholm. We didn't save enough money on the deal for it to be ownership-driven. I'm not even convinced that it was an analytics-driven move. I'm sure that influenced the, erm, "value" we got back in the deal, but the Celtics seemed just fine with Brown's impact, analytics be d***ed, for ten years until suddenly they weren't.
I'll be the one to say it: I think Tatum wanted his team back.
Of course this is all speculation, but I get the impression that Brown has been bitter and jealosu towards Tatum for years. JB was there before Tatum was, and yet it's always Tatum being the #1 option, being the face of the franchise, getting all of the accolades while Brown has always been talked about as beign Tatum's robin and gotten dragged through trade rumors.
Have you ever watched Everybody Loves Raymond? They are brothers, of course they love each other, they have been through everything together. And yet Robert can't help but resent Raymond because all their lives Ray has always gotten all the luck, all the recognition and all the success....while Robert, no matter how hard he tries or how much he succeeds, can never quite manage to get out from under Ray's shadow. ERvery time Robert achievies something in his life, Raymond manages to achieve somethign that is just that little bit more impressive. In those rare moments when Ray find himself on the receiving end of a little bad luck, Robert can't help but actually feel a sense of guilty pleasure / satisfaction.
I feel liek the Raymond./Robert relationship in that show is pretty much a direct mirror of the situation between Tatum and Brown. I don't think Brown was happy that Tatum suffered a horrible injury...I'm sure he probably felt horrible about it. But then the season started, he was playing great, and all of that usual JT sportlight started to shine on him. For the first time in his career he probably felt appreciarted and recognised. And once he started feeling that it likely became addictive. I'm sure that consciously he never would have felt happy that Tatum was out with an injury...but deep in his subconscious he probably loved every minute of it...it probably was genuinely his favourite season of his career because he finally felt apprecated, and aftger so many years of living in Tatum's shadow he probably felt the need to express that and probably didn't really care how it sounded to other people because in his mind, that little bit of shade is nothing compared to what he's been feelikng every since Tatum arrived in Boston. Also he probably felt that he was kinda untouchable after everything he achiaved that season.
When SAS called him out for this it probably struck a nerve because Brown probably does feel that way, and part of him probably feels guilty for feeliing that way, so when he got called out for hit the natural response was to get defensive.
Yes, this is absolutely all conjecture. It's entirely possible that none of this is true. But I think there is probably IS a lot of truth to it, because frankly speaking that is probably how I (and most of us) would feel if we were put in that position.