Malcolm Brogdon is upset. At least he was. Maybe he still is. I don’t know.
“The organization has had a few conversations,” Joe Mazzulla said a couple of months ago, the last time anyone has spoken on the record about Brogdon’s situation. “I think anytime you are in a situation like that and you are in a relationship, you just have to take some small steps into it. There is a healing process, there is a listening process and to see where we are at and where we have to get to. We've had some conversations as an organization but at the same time, we understand the situation that it was and as the healing process goes on, we will move forward as well as you can.”
That’s … not great. Even with the standard spin, there's no sugarcoating something that's a full-on healing process and moving forward “as well as you can.”
It’s like watching your kid fall off a bike. It’s either a “no big deal” scrapes and bruises thing or something bending a way biology didn’t intend. That's a healing process. That's moving forward as well as you can.
But we’re three full months removed from Brogdon being traded and un-traded to the Clippers. In all that time, Brogdon has been a ghost. His last social media post was in March. His personal website hasn’t been updated since his Indiana days. No one in his camp, whatever camp that might be, has leaked anything to anyone.
Meanwhile, the NBA is coming out of hibernation, and the content machine is hungry. Every little morsel of something that even sounds new is pounded, pulverized, and reshaped into aggregation Doritos. So when Gary Washburn, a highly respected member of the regular Celtics beat, said on a podcast that “Malcolm’s the one I’m concerned about too, because we’ve heard nothing and he’s angry with the team … I don’t think communication between the two sides has been fruitful,” he’s saying what we’ve already been told, sprinkled with his opinion of the situation.
People might be wondering “OMG, still??” And the best answer that any of us can give is “yeah, probably.” Mazzulla didn’t make it seem like the solution would be simple, so why would any of us think otherwise?
And then Ramona Shelburne says “I don’t think the bad feelings are over including him in any trade discussions … Any time your name is out there, it’s a little uncomfortable. I think a lot of this has to do with what’s going on with his elbow."
Huh.
Okay.
Nothing like a little vagueness to churn bizarre waters.
Shelburne wasn’t specific about what the issue was. Washburn suggested Brogdon’s decision to not have surgery could have been a form of protest, which tracks with the ESPN reporting. Brogdon choosing to let this heal on its own versus the team possibly encouraging a surgical solution to make sure it’s ready for training camp might be where we have an issue.
But we don’t know any of that for sure, which is how we end up on this long, trippy drive to figure out what’s actually happening with Brogdon in Boston. If there's one thing the human brain hates is unanswered questions, and our heads will overflow with things that can’t be ruled out until they actually are. If idle time is the devil’s workshop, then the name of his business is Speculation, Inc.
And why the speculation train continues to pick up speed is that Brogdon has become critical to Boston’s chances this season. For all the talk about Jayson Tatum taking steps forward, Jaylen Brown living up to his contract, and the options Kristaps Porzingis opens up for the Celtics, it’s Brogdon as the backup point guard that can make or break all of this.
The Celtics made this the case this summer when they moved Marcus Smart for Porzingis. They retooled their roster to address unease with the reliability of their frontcourt. They were unsure how much Robert Williams can give and what Al Horford had left, so they gave Tatum and Brown a scorer they haven't seen since Kemba Walker at a position that hasn’t been this potent at all during their careers. The result of that was keeping two high-level point guards with only an undersized yet mostly adequate option behind them.
Mostly adequate is not going to win a championship, though, and if anger over the offseason leads Brogdon to make a choice he might not otherwise, or leads the team to push for something they might not otherwise, then we might have an issue here.
And there is no time for issues here.
The collective bargaining agreement has shrunk everyone’s championship window by a fair amount, leaving an expensive team like Boston with less time than they thought to crack their championship code. Starting a season with some kind of stalemate threatens one of their final chances with the best roster they're going to have until they tear it down and build it back up again.
Speculation is all we have when it comes to Brogdon, and people choose to engage in it because losing Brogdon, be it to injury or insult, would be devastating to the Celtics. Brogdon might walk into media day in a week-and-a-half and squash this whole thing, but the silence until then only serves to amplify everyone’s guesses.
Boston needs this to be much ado about nothing. If there's patching up to be done with Brogdon, then do it. If the situation is untenable, then they need to find a suitable alternative. Whatever the reality is right now, they need to make sure it’s peaceful when camp starts, or they run the risk of ruining what they’ve worked to build.
