The Jaylen Brown trade didn’t start with a long courtship or a loud bidding war. It started with one pointed question from Brad Stevens, and that was enough to change the temperature of the whole deal.
According to Bob Myers, the Philadelphia 76ers only moved seriously once they learned Brown might actually be in play. When they reached out to Boston, Stevens’ reply was brief and revealing.
“What are you offering?”
Myers said that was the kind of answer that tells an executive everything. If a front office is truly closed off, the conversation usually dies fast. But if the response comes back like that, there’s at least a crack in the door.
“When Brad Stevens responded with, ‘What are you offering?’ Then you knew that there was a shot,” Myers said, per NBA Courtside.
That shot turned into a blockbuster. Brown was dealt to Philadelphia for Paul George, two first-round picks and two second-round picks, ending his 10-year run in Boston and sending the 2024 NBA Finals MVP to one of the Celtics’ biggest Eastern Conference rivals.
Myers said the process wasn’t some immediate scramble after another deal fell through. He pushed back on that idea directly.
“Jaylen Brown was not like, ‘We lost the Knicks and we’re going to go get Jaylen Brown,’” Myers said. “That’s not what happened. Then you start hearing there was a possibility, and the job then became, ‘Is this a real thing with Jaylen Brown?’”
Myers also made it clear he trusts Stevens’ style in negotiations.
“I think Brad Stevens is one of the most straight shooters in the league,” Myers said. “When you work in the NBA as an executive, you ultimately usually have at least one or two transactions with every other GM.”
That reputation mattered for Philadelphia. It helped convince the Sixers that this wasn’t smoke and mirrors, but a real opening worth chasing.
Brown, apparently, was caught off guard too. He later said he threw his phone across the room when he found out Boston had traded him, according to the New York Post. He never requested a move and had spent his entire career with the Celtics after Boston selected him third overall in the 2016 NBA Draft.
Boston’s return included George, a top-16 protected 2028 first-round pick, an unprotected 2031 first-round selection and second-round picks in 2028 and 2030.
The final verdict on the trade will take years. But Myers’ account shows how quickly a deal of this size can go from unlikely to real once one executive gives the right answer.
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