BOSTON — Brad Stevens knew his decision to trade Jaylen Brown — especially in the manner that he did — would be unpopular. If he were a young Boston Celtics fan, he acknowledged, he would have hated it, too. And it might very well have been the wrong choice.

So, why do it? Why ship a championship-winning, decade-long franchise pillar to the rival Philadelphia 76ers for a widely panned return of 36-year-old Paul George, two first-round draft picks and two second-round picks?

Boston’s motivation can be summed up in the word Stevens repeated 12 times during his and team owner Bill Chisholm’s 43-minute news conference Monday: “Optionality.”

Ultimately, Stevens explained, he and his staff concluded that rostering two high-usage superstar players whose salaries each consume 35% of the team’s salary cap (in Boston’s case, Jayson Tatum and Brown) was no longer a viable team-building strategy in today’s NBA.

“When I looked at our team and where the league was heading, and looked at the way we’ve finished the last couple years, and also looked at the unbelievable way we’ve played in the regular season in the last couple years, the path looked a little more challenging to me,” said Stevens, who initially tried to trade Brown and picks for two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo. “I might be wrong. I’m not going to stand up here and be defensive about that. But the path looked a little bit more challenging with 70% of our cap and such a high percentage of our usage tied into two players. And the reality in this era and in this day and age of the NBA … you have to have the optionality to do a great job of building out depth that can hopefully replace the irreplaceable individual.

“And that’s not an easy thing to do, right? And we get that. That’s absolutely nothing against Jaylen. If you have Jaylen Brown on your team, you should feature him, you should use all those possessions and you should approach things that way. But I think the importance of depth, and then obviously, we have to continue to work on ways to diversify our attack overall. All that being said, we still would not have made a move unless we thought the right opportunity presented itself.”

When the Celtics won the NBA championship in 2024, Stevens noted, Tatum and Brown accounted for 47% of their salary cap, as the former had not yet signed his supermax extension. That allowed Boston to fill out its roster with impact role players like Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis and Al Horford, all of whom were traded or left in free agency last offseason as the Celtics aggressively worked to escape the second apron of the NBA’s luxury tax. (“Flexibility” was Stevens’ buzzword after that purge.)

By trading Brown, the Celtics offload the three years and $183 million remaining on his contract, plus the potential two-year extension he would have been eligible to sign this summer. But they replaced him with a player in George whose salary is similarly hefty.

George waived his $3.9 million trade kicker, according to a report from ESPN’s Bobby Marks, but still is set to earn just a few million less than Brown this season ($54.1 million vs. $57.1 million). He also has a $56.6 million player option for 2027-28. Given George’s age (six years older than Brown) and lengthy injury history (just 78 appearances over his two seasons with Philadelphia), his contract is widely viewed as one of the worst in the NBA.

How does taking on that deal square with the “optionality” explanation? According to Stevens, the trade made sense for Boston because George’s deal is one year shorter than Brown’s and came with draft capital attached. The team views the first-rounders — one in 2028, another in ’31 — as “two potential premium assets” and the second-rounders as “sweeteners” or draft-night dart throws.

“I think the biggest thing is that it’s (George), plus the picks, plus the optionality moving forward,” Stevens said. “Paul’s contract is shorter. He’ll have his choice with his player option next year. And again, I keep going back to, myself as a kid, like, I don’t want to hear about picks and optionality. I don’t. Unfortunately, in my position, that matters. So that’s where we are.

“Can I tell you exactly what is going to happen? No. We’re excited about Paul. We’re excited about a lot of our young guys. We’re excited about the depth of our group. We’re excited about our very best players. We think we’ve got a good team, and we think we’ve got a lot of options moving forward.”

Analytics were “a small piece of information” that Boston weighed when making its decision, Stevens said. Brown’s lackluster advanced metrics (net rating, on/off splits, etc.) became a popular NBA talking point in the 10 days between the Celtics’ failed bid for Antetokounmpo and the eventual C’s-Sixers agreement.

The Celtics don’t plan to reroute George in a subsequent trade, Stevens said, and do not anticipate any other major offseason moves once their reported agreements with free agents Mitchell Robinson and Mike Conley are finalized. George visited Boston this weekend and is “excited” to come aboard, according to his new boss, who said the Celtics “like the group (they) have.”

Though past his All-NBA prime, the nine-time All-Star wing still can be a productive player when healthy, as he showed during Philly’s first-round upset of Boston two months ago.

“We like Paul,” Stevens said. “Paul’s a really good player. We’re not very far removed from all sitting in our series against Philadelphia and watching Paul be a guy that could carry you for portions of a quarter or a half, but also play a complementary role on both ends of the floor at the highest of levels.”

Chisholm, who had not spoken in a press conference setting since he was introduced as the Celtics’ new majority owner last September, said the call to trade Brown did not come from ownership.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “This was all about basically trying to win, and I think really trusting in our process. I think we have the best front office in the NBA. They put in their work and they came to the conclusion this was the best way for us to win. The mandate is to win, and I just have to keep saying that. We’ll spend whatever it takes to do that. The mandate is to win. This was Brad and his team came with a recommendation: ‘This is the way we’re going to win.’ …

“But it was hard. It was really hard. And I recognize this is a big move. And frankly, I didn’t anticipate it would happen this fast in our ownership.”

Asked whether the Brown-for-George trade will make Boston a better team this coming season, Stevens replied: “We’ll find out.”

“What we ultimately decided could be right or wrong,” he said. “It’s obviously unpopular, and most people think it will be wrong.”

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