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Ramona Shelburne, ESPN Senior Writer
WITH ALL DUE respect to Disneyland, “the happiest place on Earth” for any player or team after an NBA championship win is the hallway inside the arena that leads to the photo room.
Time loses all meaning. Family and friends walk gleefully through the corridors to take their turn posing with the gleaming Larry O’Brien Trophy.
It was well past midnight on June 18 when Jayson Tatum and his family made their way in. He’d just put up 31 points, 11 rebounds and 8 assists to lead the Boston Celtics in their series-clinching 106-88 win over the Dallas Mavericks in Game 5 of the NBA Finals.
It was the crowning moment of his career. The win that was supposed to silence anyone who had questioned whether he was enough of an alpha to carry a team to a title like his idol, Kobe Bryant, had. It was supposed to validate that the Celtics had made the right choice by placing their faith in the much- and long-questioned duo of Tatum and Finals MVP Jaylen Brown by letting them grow through their mistakes as they advanced to four conference finals appearances and one NBA Finals appearance throughout their 20s but were not able to win it all.
For a few moments, it felt like all of that was true.
“Y’all called him too ‘nice,'” Tatum’s mother, Brandy Cole, told ESPN in that happiest of hallways the night her son won his first championship. “I think he is nice. He’s laid-back and well-mannered. That’s not a bad thing. But it’s like people just wanted to hear him scream.”
As she spoke, Cole spotted Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens walking the same hallway with his family. Stevens had been the Celtics’ coach when the franchise drafted Tatum in 2017. He’d spent the past four years building the team around Tatum to maximize his well-rounded skill set.
“We don’t have to scream [now] … because we won, right, Brad?” Cole called out. “We can whisper that. … Because we champions!”
Stevens caught her eye, pointed and yelled something back. This was the night to lean into moments like this. Because as Stevens, Tatum, Brown and the entire Celtics organization were about to learn, these moments don’t last very long.
TWELVE DAYS LATER, Boston’s championship honeymoon was officially over. It was June 30, and Stevens was in his sixth-floor office inside the ultra-modern, 70,000-square-foot Auerbach Center, the Celtics’ gleaming practice facility just seven miles down Storrow Drive from TD Garden. Memorabilia from the team’s historic past adorns the walls. But everything else about it is meant to feel big and spacious — an obvious metaphor for a team with unrivaled history but still hungry for more. In his office, Stevens was deep in discussions about committing nearly $440 million to two of his team’s key players — a record-breaking $314 million extension for Tatum and a $125.9 million extension for guard Derrick White.
The discussions were not so much about whether the Celtics should commit that much money to two players so soon after investing $304 million in Brown, $135 million in ball hawking guard Jrue Holiday and $96 million in center Kristaps Porzingis, but rather about committing that amount of money in an era in which the new collective bargaining agreement makes it exceptionally more punitive to field such an expensive team.
“We’re going to face some basketball penalties down the road that we’re going to have to make decisions on,” Stevens told ESPN. “But we’re also very cognizant that we have a really damn good team and we’re trying to win a championship.”
That night, when the league’s free agent moratorium opened, Stevens planned to place calls to the representatives for Tatum, White and the team’s other free agents. But before he could dial out, a call came in that he had to take.
It was team owner Wyc Grousbeck.
Stevens didn’t think much of it at first. Everyone was on board with the team’s offseason plans.
But Grousbeck wasn’t calling to approve the deals or strategize about the ramifications of a $500 million payroll in the future. He was calling to tell Stevens that he would soon announce his intention to sell a controlling interest in the team. That, in other words, someone else would eventually be signing the gigantic checks Stevens was about to authorize.
“He reiterated his support for basketball operations,” Stevens said. “And he said to just keep on doing what we’re doing … and know that this is probably going to be a long process.”
Later, Grousbeck clarified that he would remain as the team’s controlling owner through 2025 and didn’t intend to complete the sale until 2028.
It was unsettling news.
“I think our job is to continue to, with everyone in the room — owners, basketball operations, [coach] Joe [Mazzulla] — our job is to build the best team that we can under the comfort level of the people in the room,” Stevens said. “So we’re just going to do our best to put our best foot forward, and then each year we’ll have to assess how everything looks. Then certainly the new ownership group will dictate a lot of that.”
Recent NBA history has not been kind to defending champions. The last champion to make it out of the second round of the NBA playoffs was the Golden State Warriors in 2019, and even those dynastic Warriors eventually disintegrated on and off the court — losing Klay Thompson to injury and Kevin Durant first to injury, then to free agency.
The Celtics didn’t even make it through two weeks of the offseason before the ground beneath them started to shift. Even by NBA standards, Boston has had one of the shortest championship honeymoons in recent memory.
“It’s amazing how many of my friends in the industry, who have won a championship, [say] it’s like it’s one or two days and then it’s done,” Stevens said. “I think in a lot of ways I would agree with that from my own perspective.”
He chuckled. From Grousbeck’s shocking announcement, to the public dismay over Tatum’s sporadic playing time with Team USA and Brown’s exclusion from it, to the lingering uncertainty over Porzingis’ serious ankle injury, the Celtics summer vacation could’ve come with trip insurance. And what should have been weeks or months of elation quickly turned.
But Stevens knows sympathy is in short supply, especially for champions.
“I think [Mazzulla] summed that up well with his ‘nobody cares’ quote,” Stevens said. “Everybody’s after [us]. We’ve got a really good team, so do a lot of other teams. We’re going to have to beat all of them and human nature. That’s the challenge, and what the hell, it’s a great challenge.'”
TEN DAYS AFTER inking Tatum and White to massive extensions, and just three weeks after paddling down the Charles River in duck boats in front of hundreds of thousands of screaming fans, the second domino of the summer fell in Boston. It was unanticipated, initially seemingly irrelevant to the Celtics or their summer. But its ripple effects would soon go viral.
Kawhi Leonard had just withdrawn from Team USA after several days of practice, opening a coveted roster spot on a team heavily favored to win gold. Candidates to replace him were discussed internally, within Team USA, and externally. Brown, who’d just been named the Finals MVP for his scintillating, two-way dominance throughout the playoffs, seemed like an obvious choice.
Instead, within hours, Team USA chose his teammate, defensive specialist Derrick White.
Brown was not about to let the slight pass quietly.
The same day, Brown posted a cryptic tweet with three eyeglass emojis. Five hours later, he posted again, this time accusing Nike, which was a sponsor of Team USA, of preventing his participation. “This what we doing?”
🧐🧐🧐
— Jaylen Brown (@FCHWPO) July 10, 2024
@nike this what we doing ?
— Jaylen Brown (@FCHWPO) July 10, 2024
Team USA executive director Grant Hill denied the allegation.
“You get 12 spots, and you have to build a team,” Hill said. “And one of the hardest things is leaving people off the roster that I’m a fan of. … But the responsibility that I have is to put together a team … that will give us the best opportunity for success.
“And, so, whatever theories that might be out there, they’re just that.”
Brown hadn’t exactly been a star for Team USA in 2019, when he played in the World Cup under Gregg Popovich, averaging just 7.9 points and 4.1 rebounds as the team finished a disappointing seventh. And there were some questions then about his ball movement and decision making, sources said, and questions during the summer among Team USA leaders about whether he’d be willing to play the defensive-minded role that White was being tasked with.
But that World Cup was five years and one Finals MVP and NBA championship ago. This snub didn’t reflect that.
“You saw an evolution in Jaylen’s game [last season],” teammate Al Horford told ESPN. “It wasn’t just about scoring. He was getting people involved. He’s making the right reads. He is making the cuts when he needs to make it to the basket. And then, on the defensive end, he just took it to another level. His energy, his commitment to the defense — it was inspiring for all of us.”
None of that seemed to matter to the people deciding on Leonard’s replacement, which is why it seemed to sting Brown so deeply.
Brown texted White directly to make sure he knew none of this was personal, sources said.
But Brown wasn’t through publicly responding to the snub, posting another cryptic message the next day. “I’m not afraid of your resources” and then directly responding to Hill’s denial.
grant hill calling me a conspiracy theorist is disappointing I’ve been a VP since I was 21 years old I have a great understanding
— Jaylen Brown (@FCHWPO) July 28, 2024
No one in Boston was surprised Brown had taken such umbrage.
“That’s who Jaylen is,” one team source said. “He is not afraid to speak his mind. Jaylen has a constant chip on his shoulder and sees doubters everywhere.”
If anything, there’s an expectation that the chip will be even bigger this year.
“I’ve been in the gym with Jaylen the past few weeks,” Horford said. “First of all, the dude looked like he’s put on 10 more pounds of muscle. He looks great — just unreal. He’s so hungry, so motivated, so driven.”
The controversy around Brown’s snub was only the beginning for a long-maligned duo that thought winning a championship would have silenced their critics. On July 28, in Team USA’s first group-stage game against Nikola Jokic and Serbia, Tatum, a five-time All-Star, didn’t play a single minute.
He was not injured or being disciplined. It was a true DNP-CD for the player who’d started two of the five exhibition games in advance of the Olympics and had averaged 15.2 points for Team USA in winning a gold medal back in 2021.
Four weeks after inking the biggest contract in NBA history, the First Team All-NBA selection unceremoniously sat at the end of the cold Team USA bench — a public humiliation on the world’s biggest stage.
Head coach Steve Kerr had told Tatum before the game he wasn’t likely to play, sources said. But Kerr had otherwise given no advance warning or reasoning, so the public, and even the announcers, were left guessing and analyzing Tatum’s every expression and action on the sideline.
Tatum’s parents both expressed their frustration on social media.
No he not. But if you find out what’s going on please let me know – unacceptable and makes NO SENSE. https://t.co/vtz1W398XJ
— BCole_Esq (@Brandy_N_Cole) August 9, 2024
Man please. Miss me with that BS!! 💯
— Teezy (@tatumjustin40) August 9, 2024
Kerr tried to ameliorate the situation the next day by saying he “felt like an idiot” for not playing Tatum, and started Tatum in the next game against South Sudan. But the damage had been done.
Unable to get into any kind of rhythm, and still struggling to work through a mechanical issue with his jumper that arose during the playoffs, Tatum averaged 5 points, 5 rebounds and 1.5 assists in less than 18 minutes per game. He shot just 43% during the playoffs, and 28% from three. In the Olympics, he hit just 38% from the floor in the Americans’ six games and missed all four of his three-point attempts.
“I personally was not happy about it,” Horford said of Tatum’s sporadic playing time with USA Basketball and Brown’s snub. “Those guys, they’re very special to me. And even though it was nothing against me. It motivated me and all of us for this season.
“I know that they handled it well. They’re fine. But when you see those two guys, the amount of work that they’ve put in, the sacrifices they have made. To be on the top of their games and that happened to them, it was hard to watch [the Olympics] and not see them in the position that we would’ve hoped to see them in.”
TATUM, AT LEAST, was able to play in the Olympics. Porzingis wasn’t even able to help his home country, Latvia, try to qualify and compete in the Olympics. He spent his summer rehabilitating from an injury to his left ankle, one the Celtics themselves called “rare.”
The Celtics sent trainers to monitor his progress while he worked overseas and saw him back in Boston for the first time last week.
On Friday, a jet-lagged Porzingis stepped into the Celtics’s practice facility. He’d just landed back from Europe. Soon after pushing open the door to the nearly all-glass building, he saw Mazzulla, already glistening in sweat, mid-session on one-leg squats as he, himself, was rehabbing a torn meniscus.
Seeing his center for the first time in months, Mazzulla stopped his workout to catch up.
“What do you think training camp should be? Easy or hard?” Mazzulla asked him.
Somewhere in the middle? Porzingis thought.
“F— no,” Mazzulla said. “It should be super hard.”
Porzingis, of course, won’t be a part of it.
“[The injury is] unique enough that we won’t obviously rush anything,” Stevens said. “But I would say that if we have a timeline in our head, we’re very, very encouraged by where he is.”
Still, the expectation is the Celtics will be without their star center for the first few months of the season.
“The expectation is sometime in December,” Porzingis told ESPN. “But I’m feeling really good and I’m working towards hopefully playing earlier than that.”
While Porzingis’ optimism is based on how he currently feels, both he and the team publicly and privately acknowledge they will constantly evaluate his progress — and err on the side of caution.
Playing without their unicorn center adds tremendous pressure to the Celtics’ title defense.
Porzingis was a revelation in his first season in Boston, unlocking the Celtics’ historic offense with his shooting, passing and post game. He allowed Tatum to transform into more of an attacking playmaker and Brown to become one of the best two-way players in the game. He made it impossible for teams to use zone defenses against the Celtics, or load up on Tatum defensively.
The 38-year old Horford is the likely starter at center while Porzingis is out.
When Horford arrived back at the facility on Sept. 1, he found someone else had beat him there.
“I’m walking in at 8, 8:15 a.m. and JT’s already done,” Horford said. “Which means he must’ve got there at 6 a.m.”
Indeed Tatum had, even though he’d just returned the night before from a weeklong trip to China with Jordan Brand. “It was easy to get up early,” Tatum told ESPN, noting the jetlag would kick in later in the day. And it would also allow him to pick his son, Deuce, up from school, he said.
But Tatum wasn’t just there at 6 that first week. He had been doing two-a-days with his longtime skills coach Drew Hanlen and physical therapist Nick Sang to address a mechanical issue in his jumper that had come up early last season and reared its head again during the playoffs and Olympics.
“I think a lot of people are like, ‘oh, he’s out for revenge,'” Hanlen told ESPN. “I don’t think Jayson looks at it like that. He’s like, ‘Compare my resume at 27 to Michael Jordan, who never won one at 27. Compare it to LeBron, who had won one. Compare it to Steph, who had one.”
As for what happened this summer, Tatum let his extra work serve as his comment.
“Jayson, I thought, handled everything like a total pro and champ and put team first and won his second gold medal right after winning his NBA championship,” Stevens said. “I also think that those guys will take any motivation that they can get work and get better.”
IT’S BEEN THREE and a half months since the Celtics took their photos with the Larry O’Brien trophy and felt the satisfaction of knowing they didn’t have to answer anyone who’d ever doubted them. Or scream. Or be more of an alpha.
That’s what winning a title feels like. And for most champions, it lasts a while, transforming into swagger and confidence by the start of the next season.
Stevens let himself relish in it for a few days before the realities of the NBA schedule and his boss’ stunning decision snapped him back to the business of the franchise.
“Honestly,” he said. “If you ask me, ‘What’s the moment you’ll always remember?’ The parade is just otherworldly. I don’t even know how to describe it.
“When we turned the corner onto Causeway Street, just the mass of humanity, of every age, every race, everyone wearing Celtics uniforms and shirts. It was just a lot of happiness.
“That will be a day that I’ll always remember.”
Stevens was close enough to Tatum that day to see the look on his face as they turned onto Causeway and saw all those people. They’ve talked about what that was like more than they’ve talked about what happened at the Olympics or the future sale of the team.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how that all plays itself out,” Stevens said. “But I don’t know what we could go through as a team that we haven’t been through in the last seven years.”