You are making "excuses' even if they are legit. Even your post suggests the Celtics burned through 4 of the 6 picks. (Young, Kyrie bust, RL, AN). Eventually, you have to use hindsight to judge GMs otherwise you can excuse every pick away by saying "well yeah, with hindsight, you take Giannis over Kelly" or "With hindsight, maybe you pass on RL."This write up doesn't even make sense. The Celtics didn't burn through the rest of those extra firsts. The first one they got was James Young who was a mid-1st so obviously that was a miss (where most picks are missed) but then they traded the last one for Kyrie, a move that sucks now with hindsight but was perfectly reasonable. And then they got moderately unlucky with where the Sac and Mem picks landed. Jury is still out on those returns but they never had great options with either pick due to the pick location.
I don't think anyone thinks that the Celtics' core is better than the Bucks or Nets but the 76ers have their own issues with Simmons right now. End of the day, the Celtics were never going to have a big 2021 summer so you'd think that would have been acknowledged by someone who's supposedly paying attention. But the big point is that they now have flexibility for a major move, which, again, the writers aren't acknowledging. All things considered, Brad had a very good summer, IMO.
I do think he's being a bit disingenuous by only using the "Brooklyn/Philly" picks and not all the picks during that period. He's only focused on the misses. TL is looking like at least a double, potentially a HR. PP is a decent get in the 20s. I hate Grant Williams but he's not a bad pick given his draft position. If TL is a fringe all star, RL and AN missing doesn't hurt as much. If TL is a fringe all star and one of RL and AN develop into a 25+ minute rotation player... That's a top 10 talent, a top 20 talent, a top 5 center, a rotation player and PP all drafted in a 5 year period. Hard to complain. If TL is injured goods and RL and AN both bust, the last 3 year drafts are YUCK. At times last year, it was sort of looking like that than TL emerged, AN started hitting shots and some people like what RL was doing.