Why rooting for your favorites to get the Brink's truck is counterintuitive to them remaining Celtics

It's sadly ironic that the same fans that insisted the NBA reclassify Jaylen Brown's position in 2023 so he could make All-NBA to be eligible to become the highest paid player in the league as opposed to "just" a max contract helped punch his ticket out of town. Brown at $40 million instead of $60 million per year is a huge difference for NBA teams trying to fill out a championship roster.

If you are a stan of just a player and don’t care about the team’s success then fine demand they get as big a bag as they wish. But if you root for the Celtics you should know that once a player is considered overpaid, his chances of getting traded increases tenfold.

You know who Boston didn’t try to trade? Players on team friendly deals like Pritchard, Queta, or Hugo. One can understand kids who don’t know about the salary cap rooting for their favorites to get paid whatever they ask for, but adults who are diehard fans not being aware of this is perplexing.

If there was no salary cap, no luxury tax, and no 2nd Apron penalties, then shouting, "Pay this man whatever he wants!" would be fine since the billionaire owners can afford it. Even then they likely raise ticket prices to cover some of that so it has an effect on you. But in the modern NBA and most professional sports leagues nowadays, owners have negotiated salary caps and penalties for exceeding them. The NBA Players Association dropped the ball when they agreed to the latest CBA with the 2nd Apron penalties that go beyond simply financial taxes, but hurt the team's ability to trade, sign, and draft.

The new CBA enabled NBA owners the ability to protect themselves from spending, while simultaneously getting the media and fans to carry water for them when they choose to be cheap. They don't need to defend letting a player go over money, because fans and the media are there to explain how keeping the player would hurt the future success of the team. Brilliant financial move by the billionaire owners getting that in the CBA and colossal error on the Players Association agreeing to it. Fans LOVED Isaiah Thomas in Boston, but the moment he started with the brinks truck talk and fans also demanded Boston back it up for him that increased the odds the Celtics would move on from him. Had the Celtics backed up the brinks truck for Isaiah and paid him the max or anything close to that, guess what? They still would have then traded him when his production value was far less than his salary. And the Celtics would have had to have given up multiple first round picks just to dump him.

There was a reason why the last Brooklyn first round pick that Boston still owned was the main asset Cleveland wanted in exchange for Kyrie Irving (Cleveland would foolishing draft Collin Sexton over Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ten months later with that pick). Regardless of Isaiah's health, NBA teams were scared to give a huge contract to Thomas in his thirties, which lowered his trade value.

Isaiah is a tough case, because it really sucks that he got injured right before some team would have paid him a still very substantial money bag, but in the case of Brown I never could understand fans wanting him to make $60 mil a year instead of $40 million as if any of us will see $40 million in our entire lifetimes.

Why are you rooting for already generational wealthy people to not have to settle for "just" a $220 million dollar contract instead of a $300 million dollar deal? Especially when you take into account that the more the Celtics pay (or overpay) one player the less you have to retain your other favorite players.

Overpaying one piece always leads to the loss of others

Fans need to stop calling other fans “haters” or clowns when they come up with realistic trade ideas because they then look like fools when the trade ideas they whined about as horrible deals for the Celtics end up being a considerably better deal than the team inevitably gets for said player. The amount of times on Twitter or Facebook we were bashed for any Brown trade idea or reporting of a rumor is wild considering they were all better returns for Boston than what they just got.

Stop shooting the messenger for reporting trade rumors and trying to come up with favorable Celtics trade ideas just because you irrationally aren't aware of your favorite player's value around the league and your demanding that they get shown their "flowers" and "respect" by getting the max dollars available (and becoming overpaid) actually led to them likely being traded and for less than the return should be.

Notice that the fans who call their fellow team’s fans “haters” or clowns never return to say “oops my bad” after the eventual trade is announced? They slander their fellow fans with names and think they are "casuals," but the inabilty to grasp that the more a team pays a player over their on court value the more it negatively efffects your team's chance at winning. Rooting for your favorite Celtics to get the Brink's truck of cash bags is counterintuitive to them remaining in Boston and the only people who can't grasp that fact are the true "casuals." Too casual of a fan to ever learn about the salary cap.

If you are a Celtics fan, stop rooting for your favorite players to make as much as possible and stop attacking your fellow fans. And if you are simply a fan of certain players than by all means continue to demand they get paid tens of millions more on top of whatever extremely wealthy salary they would still be making, but know that means you are not really a fan of the Celtics and them winning championships.