It’s hard to make sense of the Celtics trading Jaylen Brown, especially to a division rival

The partnership between Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, who were selected No. 3 overall in successive drafts by the Boston Celtics in 2016 and 2017, reached extraordinary heights, bearing five conference finals, two NBA Finals and a championship in 2024.

And now it’s over. Just like that. The Celtics traded Brown — the MVP of the 2024 NBA Finals and Eastern Conference finals — to the Philadelphia 76ers for Paul George, two first-round draft picks and a pair of second-round picks, according to multiple reports.

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I guess no partnerships end well in the NBA, but this one, it had a chance to be special.

Tatum could not win on his own, or so the theory goes, and neither could Brown, but together they could compete, and they did a damn good job of it over almost a decade.

There was real debate about who was better — Tatum or Brown — throughout their nine-year tenure together, though they never seriously entertained a discussion around it. It was forced upon them for no other reason than the fact that we love debate. We need to know who’s better. We need to sort them into a ranking, so our brains can feel better.

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But “comparison is the thief of joy,” Celtics executive Brad Stevens once told me.

And now it’s cost him his team’s second-best player. You see, Tatum is better than Brown. Or at least he was, before he ruptured his right Achilles tendon in the midst of defending their championship together. Tatum has made the All-NBA First Team four times, after all.

But Brown, again, was Finals MVP and Eastern Conference finals MVP of that title run, picking up then-Dallas Mavericks superstar Luka Dončić on defense in addition to his contributions on offense. There is a grit and attitude to him that drew him to a lot of fans in Boston, where effort is always respected, and Brown — if nothing else — gave a s***.

For all the talk about how advanced analytics are unkind to Brown, he was a winner in Boston, making a surprise run to the Eastern Conference finals in his rookie season. He would make five more trips to the conference finals in his 10 seasons there. He gave the Celtics everything…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/its-hard-to-make-sense-of-the-celtics-trading-jaylen-brown-especially-to-a-division-rival-022636062.html

Author : Ben Rohrbach

Publish date : 2026-07-02 02:26:00

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