The Boston Celtics parted ways with Jaylen Brown just two years after he led them to an NBA championship, and it has a lot to do with their new ownership.
Last year, the Grousbeck family finalized a deal to sell the Boston Celtics franchise to Bill Chisholm for a then-record $6.1 billion.
However, the true nature of the deal and the financing has played a huge part in the Celtics being forced to part ways with Jaylen Brown.
How Boston Celtics ownership forced them to dismantle championship team
When Bill Chisholm purchased the team, he didn’t have the financing or liquid assets to pay the Grousbeck family the whole $6.1 billion amount.
As such, he reached out to Sixth Street, one of the biggest private equity firms in the world. And even though they financed just a portion of the deal, the agreement Chisholm struck with them gave them a lot more power.
Sixth Street negotiated for preferred shares, which suggests that the firm would get their money back before other investors should the financial situation of the entity suffer.
As such, it is not unfair to presume that, when negotiating over the sale in 2024-25, Sixth Street saw the immense wage bill that they had accrued, the highest in the NBA at the time, and the tax bill being in the second apron had picked up for them.
So after the sale was announced earlier in the year, the Celtics front office got to work on shedding their wage bill.
Trades came to send Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday, two of the team’s highest earners, to different teams in exchange for cap filler.
Players like Luke Kornet and Al Horford would end up leaving the team in free agency, thus shedding the wage bill even further.
But that was still only a temporary reprieve, especially considering the Celtics’ two best players were making upwards of $50 million.
The Boston Celtics chose Jayson Tatum over Jaylen Brown
In 2023, the Boston Celtics signed Jaylen Brown to a five-year, $285 million contract extension, the largest contract in the NBA at the time.
Just a year later, right after their NBA championship win, the Celtics offered Jayson Tatum a five-year, $314 million contract, thus making him the highest-paid player in NBA history.
This meant that from the 2025-26 NBA season, the Celtics’ two star players were going to make a combined $100 million between themselves.
Given the financial stress and team construction woes it created, the Celtics ownership group, presumably led by Sixth Street, would have demanded moving on from one of the two.
And even though Brown was coming off the best season of his career while Tatum was on the sidelines, the franchise decided to back Tatum and move Jaylen Brown away.
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