Jaylen Brown is keeping the temperature low before his first game against Jayson Tatum and the Celtics, even if the storyline around him is already burning hot.
Brown’s reunion with Boston is set for Tuesday night in Philadelphia, but after the Sixers beat Chicago on Sunday, he wasn’t interested in feeding the tension any further. He has already taken a few subtle shots at his former teammate since being dealt to Philadelphia in July, yet this time he stayed measured.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Brown told reporters. “I mean, he’s on his side, I’m on my side, playing basketball.
Both of us are trying to win, so it’s nothing to talk about. Just check the ball up.”
Brown spent 10 years in Boston and said he still loves the city and “a lot of people I developed a relationship with.” He and Tatum were longtime partners who helped deliver a title in 2024, with Brown earning MVP honors for both the Eastern Conference finals and the NBA Finals.
The split didn’t come with obvious public friction, but the relationship started to shift after Brown stepped into the lead scoring role last season while Tatum recovered from a torn Achilles. Boston later made Brown available in an unsuccessful push to land Giannis Antetokounmpo, then shopped him more broadly before eventually sending him to Philadelphia.
“Decisions were made,” Brown said. “It’s life, it’s business.
Move on. It’s OK.
What goes into it, it’s emotions, you got to pack up and move your stuff. Your family got to pack up and move, but it’s life.
It’s happened to numerous amount of people, myself included. So I just look forward to just being able to build with my team over here, trying to make the best of my situation.”
Jay King of The Athletic dug into why the partnership unraveled in Boston and reported that a source close to both players said “there was no conflict” that pushed them apart. League sources also told King that Brown told the Celtics’ front office he expected to be treated more like a franchise player on and off the court after his strong 2025/26 season, and that he was less willing to give up pieces of his game the way he had in the past. King added that Brown did not interact with Tatum when the Sixers played a preseason game in Boston, and it does not appear the two have spoken much since the trade.
While Brown’s next chapter is about to collide with his old one, the Sixers got a useful lift from Jabari Walker on Sunday. The bench big gave them nine points and 11 rebounds as Philadelphia worked through a sluggish start, and he has been logging most of his minutes at center because injuries have thinned the team’s frontcourt.
“He’s continuing to do the same thing, starting with playing hard,” coach Nick Nurse said. “Five offensive rebounds and probably another five or six near-misses.
So it’s funny, when he’s in there and it’s such a harder defensive rebound for them, it slows transition. So those are impactful plays, too.
… Very, very good minutes for him.”
The other adjustment came from LeBron James, who has recently been seeing weaker defenders sag onto him and daring him to shoot from deep. On Sunday, he answered by shifting away from the playmaking role and going after the rim to exploit mismatches, according to Aaronson.
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