Citi used to have a student loan management operation headquartered here in Sioux Falls.
Some years ago, they announced they were getting out of the student loan business, and that put a big question mark around the people in that department.
Citi hadn’t announced layoffs—in fact they hadn’t announced anything.
At one point I asked a friend of mine who worked in that department if she’d heard anything.
Her response: “I don’t listen to what people are saying, because the people who know what’s going on aren’t
talking.”
But here we are, talking once again about Giannis for Jaylen.
I’d love to put my friend’s advice to work here—and indeed, I suspect that most of the people talking are talking through their hats—but I can’t because these rumors have become the story to cover, and I am, as a fan, caught up in all this.
I have no insight whatsoever into what’s actually going on—an admission that I wish more talking heads would make before they repeat unsourced rumors.
What we’ve got is a situation where once again, we’ve collectively put Jaylen Brown on the trading block.
And, honestly, this is a weird place to be as a fan. At least those of us who are fans of Jaylen Brown. The guy has always been a polarizing figure among Celtics fans, which is probably why these trade rumors catch fire whenever they crop up.
There’s a subset of fans who are positively eager to see him gone. One or two of them might even chip in on the cost of moving van rentals. I’ve never understood these fans.
I like JB. I think that he struggled a bit with maturity on the court early on—he might have benefitted from a couple extra seasons of college ball—but he’s grown up into a valuable member of the team both in terms of what he does for himself, but also in terms of what he does for his teammates.
The C’s seem to have given up on designating team captains, but JB has basically taken up that mantle in all but name
So it’s uncomfortable for me as a fan to think about trading him to another team in exchange for a superstar who might be on the verge of having his body break down on him (I can’t help but think of Kemba Walker when I look at Giannis’ age and the nagging injuries that he had all last season)—and who can walk at the end of next season if he wants to (shades of Kyrie).
It’s uncomfortable to be a Schrödinger’s fan when it comes to Jaylen—and Giannis. Am I supposed to look forward to JB’s contributions to the C’s next season, or am I supposed to get excited about seeing what Giannis can do?
It’s pretty hard to try to steer a middle ground through this—in fact, I’d say that it’s about as impossible as having an atom simultaneously be in a state of stability and decay. Ambiguity doesn’t work in some cases. Either we want Jaylen on the team next season or we want Giannis. I don’t think we can logically want both.
Adding further to the quandary is the fact that we have zero say in what actually happens. No matter how much we like Jaylen or doubt Giannis’ ability to contribute at a high level for the next few years, if Stevens is going to pull the trigger on this trade, he’s going to do so based on input from people who aren’t us.
All we want is certainty, and certainty is the last thing that’s on offer at the moment.
So here we are… Caught between two possible outcomes and trying to find solid footing on the shifting, slippery, oozy foundation of unsubstantiated rumors.
Frankly, I tend to have my doubts about the rumors that have been swirling for a month now simply because they’ve been swirling for a month now.
Again, I don’t know how Boston’s front office works, and I don’t know that they’ve done anything other than kick the tires on a Giannis deal—which any responsible front office needs to do. But this lingering chatter, these leaks, this doesn’t feel like the way Boston does business.
It doesn’t take that long to hammer out a deal.
It feels like Milwaukee is trying to drive up the return for a player who’s got only one year guaranteed, some nagging injuries, and a growing reputation as a malcontent.
I don’t know that Boston made an offer for Giannis back when these rumors started, but I’d be very surprised if that offer was an open-ended one. I don’t think Boston put an offer out as soon as their season ended with the idea that it would just sit with no expiration date while Milwaukee used it in an attempt to solicit better deals from other teams.
I always ask myself what people who leak rumors like these gain by leaking them. I mean, either these rumors are coming straight from the horse’s mouth or they’re being exaggerated somewhere down the line, by people who are distorting what they’ve heard for their own particular ends, ends that have nothing to do with objective reporting.
But here’s the thing. I may have my suspicions that these rumors are being started in bad faith, but there’s no certainty to these suspicions.
My skepticism has no more firm a foundation than the credulity of someone who believes that this is all smoke, and where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
But this is where I find myself as a fan.
I have an outcome that I would prefer—that Jaylen remains with the Celtics—and I’m constructing a rationale to justify it.
I don’t like living in this space.
Congrats to the Knicks
When the Knicks came back and beat the Jaylen Brown-less Celtics in game 80 of the regular season, I remember quipping to my brother, “Gee, you’d think they won the Finals.”
Well, whaddya know.
The important thing, as Celtics fans, is that we overreact to the Knicks, put them on a pedestal, and assume that only a major overhaul of the Boston roster will be sufficient to catch up with them.
