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A longtime Celtics insider says Zion Williamson is the only player worth trading Jaylen Brown for, in a blockbuster deal with the Pelicans.
A longtime Celtics insider believes only one NBA player is worth considering in a Jaylen Brown trade, pointing to the Pelicans’ Zion Williamson as the lone talent capable of justifying such a blockbuster move.
The proposal would send Brown to the New Orleans Pelicans in exchange for Williamson, reviving debate over whether Boston should consider a high-risk, high-reward shake-up built around one of the league’s most polarizing stars.
Brown just wrapped a career year with 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds and 5.1 assists per game in 71 games, earning All-NBA second-team honors for the second time and finishing sixth in MVP voting. Trading him means trading the 2024 NBA Finals MVP.
GettyThe Celtics’ asking price for Jaylen Brown should only be Zion Williamson, says team insider Sean Grande.
Sean Grande’s Zion Williamson Proposal
“Zion’s the guy to me,” Sean Grande, the Celtics’ radio play-by-play broadcaster for the past 25 seasons, said Friday on an episode of CLNS Media‘s long-running “Celtics Beat” podcast. “If you’re going to shoot the moon and roll the dice and swing for the fences, that to me is the only guy that I can see doing that for. We know what the potential problems are, but you always forget what he looks like when he’s healthy, motivated, and in shape. And the dude’s 26 years old.”
Grande admitted the scenario was “total pie in the sky” and questioned whether New Orleans is genuinely ready to move on from the Williamson era. He argued that a straight Trey Murphy-for-Brown swap would be a public-relations nonstarter and that Boston shouldn’t deal Brown simply because sports talk shows say so.
Another former Celtics radio voice, Glenn Ordway, fired back at his friend.
“Has my friend Sean Grande lost his mind?? Zion Williamson for JB?? So you would give up a dependable & durable Top 10 guy in Jaylen Brown for an attendance-challenged guy who has just been a tease his whole career because he lacks discipline???” Ordway posted.
Sports betting analyst Julian Edlow floated a more complete hypothetical on June 23. In Edlow’s scenario, Williamson, Murphy and Pelicans 2024 first-round pick Yves Missi head to Boston for Brown and Sam Hauser, creating a potentially unstoppable Williamson-and-Jayson Tatum pick-and-roll tandem, according to Edlow’s post.
Zion Williamson’s Lengthy Injury History
NBA insider Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson reported June 3 that New Orleans “would not object to trading Zion Williamson” for a player of Brown’s caliber.
“The Pelicans prefer to keep Zion, but they aren’t married to him if they can offload him,” according to Robinson, as quoted by Yahoo Sports.
Williamson acknowledged the landscape in April.
“If we’re going to be realistic about it, the NBA is a business. I could be traded in the offseason, or I could be traded before [next season’s] trade deadline,” he said, as quoted by Bleacher Report.
Why? Williamson’s games played since 2019: 24, 61, 0, 29, 70, 30 and approximately 62. A preseason meniscus tear, a Jones fracture that wiped out the 2021-22 season, a hamstring injury that ended his 2022-23 season and persistent lower-body setbacks since have defined his career, according to RotoWire. His 2022 contract extension includes body-composition clauses.
Brown’s track record runs longer. He has appeared in 674 career games, played through a partially torn meniscus in the 2025 playoffs and holds a five-year supermax extension worth approximately $304 million that he signed in 2023, according to Fox Sports.
Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist who covers MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, boxing, golf, and Olympic sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Newspaper and Press Association awards for sports feature writing. He was a sports editor and writer at The Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo, Japan, covering the Olympics, pro baseball, boxing, sumo and other sports. More about Jonathan Vankin
