The theme was "optionality." This was a word Stevens used many times when responding to questions about this trade.
The trade, says Stevens, is maybe less about straightforwardly fortifying the team for an immediate title push than it is about what ESPN's Ohm Youngmisuk described as "optionality," an awful enough word in any context but particularly gruesome as cold corporate jargon.
😂
If you tuned in to the press conference, you heard two buzzwords from President of Basketball Operations Brad Stevens and majority owner Bill Chisolm: “optionality” and “basketball reasons.”
...
No, it wasn’t about switchability on defense or being able to play different kinds of Mazzulla Ball. We’re talking about optionality [see video at bottom😂]when it comes to team-building, specifically on the cap sheet.
There were plenty of other takeaways from Stevens and Chisholm’s press conference, but Stevens’ “optionality” explanation was chief among them.
Brad Stevens says ‘optionality,’ cost of stars against salary cap motivations for Jaylen Brown trade
Stevens, the Boston Celtics’ president of basketball operations, pulled the trigger on a Brown-to-Philadelphia-for-Paul George trade (https://www.nbcsports.com/nba/news/winners-losers-from-jaylen-brown-to-76ers-for-paul-george-trade) that has been lambasted around the league and vilified in Boston. He took to the podium, sitting next to team owner Bill Chisholm, and explained his reasoning largely as “optionality.”
And now, Celtics fans, stand up, put your hands together and cheer wildly for … optionality!
Brad Stevens, president of basketball operations for the Celtics, used that word so many times Monday that it kept reminding me of that time former Philadelphia 76ers guard Allen Iverson kept talking about “practice.”😂
Steve Buckley gets the Pulitzer for connecting Stevens' mind-numbing, brain-dead, tone-deaf, career-shortening (?) overuse of "optionality" with "practice" from twenty-four years ago!
