Wyc Grousbeck: No trade because Celtics ‘refused to get ripped off'

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The Celtics were in the middle of trade rumors all day -- for Jahlil Okafor, for Nerlens Noel, for Khris Middleton, for Greg Monroe -- but in the end wound up keeping the No. 3 overall pick and using it to select Cal's Jaylen Brown.

And the reason was simple.

"[We] refuse to get ripped off by anybody," Celtics co-owner Wyc Grousbeck told Kyle Draper, Brian Scalabrine and A. Sherrod Blakely on CSN's Celtics Draft Central moments after the team had selected Brown.

"[The] trades that were offered to us . . . we'd hang up the phone and kind of chuckle," he said. "Because it wasn't even close. It wasn't even close. People [were] trying to rip us off because they think we're in a hurry (to make the Celtics a championship-caliber team), and we're not going to be ripped off. We're going to build this team year-by-year if we have to build it year-by-year."

Earlier, he'd made clear the team's philosophy.

"We got to build this thing toward Banner 18," he said, meaning the franchise's 18th championship. "We got to make every decision, whether people like it or not, whether it looks good tonight or not . . . my responsibility is to do what's right for the Celtics for Banner 18 as best I can do it. And we feel this pick is the exact right thing to do."
 

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