Regarding Jaylen Brown’s trade talks, Jayson Tatum said, “I could have done a better job.”

For an extended period, Jaylen Brown’s name was mentioned in trade discussions, and Jayson Tatum feels bad about not actively endorsing his long-time partner throughout those discussions. Tatum was quite clear in an interview with Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated that he would never want Brown traded by the Boston Celtics.

 

“I think I could have done a better job of expressing my feelings in public,” Tatum adds, “I’ve always told him that.” “I’ve always wanted him here, and he knew it.” Man, I don’t get involved with any of those talks, I would always tell him. I never said to any player, including Brad Stevens, the head of basketball operations for the Celtics, “Hey, I want this guy in, I want this guy out of here.”

 

“I show up and I want to do my job and play basketball,” Tatum continued. “And looking back on in those moments, I didn’t know how that could affect somebody, because I was never in that situation. I feel like maybe I could have done a better job of publicly saying, ‘No, we don’t want anybody, we want JB.’ I just was always like, ‘I want to stay out of it.’”

I think it’s fair that Tatum doesn’t really want to get involved when it comes to roster moves, but there probably should have been some exceptions. Brown would have been just that and his teammate would have greatly appreciated some public support.