What the Jaylen Brown contract means for the Pistons

What the Jaylen Brown contract means for the Pistons

Having the duo of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum all but guarantees the Boston Celtics are going to be in the playoffs, as the two have been mainstays in the Eastern Conference Finals and have already made one NBA Finals.

So signing Brown was an easy decision for the Celtics, but will it be for the long term? Once the Celtics sign Tatum to his extension, they are going to have over a half a billion dollars invested in two players who will be eating up around 70 percent of their salary cap.

How exactly are you supposed to build a team around that? The super max contract may have guaranteed the top guys more money (is Brown even a top-15 player?) but it made it harder for teams to build competitively around them and almost guarantees that most of them will be traded before they complete their contract.

This is what the future is going to look like for the Detroit Pistons, as they have talent stacked up and will be handing out extensions for their young players soon. It starts next offseason with Cade Cunningham and will continue to Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren. Rookie extensions are one thing, but those second extensions are going to be killer for teams that have multiple guys around the same age all looking to cash in at the same time.

Having multiple players worthy of a super max deal is a great problem to have in theory, but keeping them is not going to be easy. It seems like this new CBA guarantees more player movement, as teams will have to shift one super max guy in order to be able to sign another or to fill our their roster with more than minimum guys.

It might make more teams balk at giving out those contracts in the first place, or cause them to go for it in a short window of time and then trade one of them, which is what could happen in Boston.