Jaylen Brown knew the Celtics were planning to move him. The part he needed answered was simpler: where was he going?
According to ESPN’s Kris Rhim, Brown didn’t find out he was headed to Philadelphia until the Boston Celtics and 76ers had already completed the trade. Rhim reported the details Tuesday, just hours before Brown is set to face his old team for the first time.
The route to Philadelphia came after a summer full of uncertainty. Boston had also looked into sending Brown to Milwaukee in a deal for Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Brown learned about that possibility while he was on vacation.
When the Bucks sent Antetokounmpo to Miami instead, Brown told the Celtics he was willing to stay. Boston’s answer was that it still planned to trade him.
That’s when Brown asked for some control over the process. Per Rhim, he wanted a say in where he landed. If the Celtics were going to make the call themselves, he wanted to know the destination ahead of time.
By the time he was told it was Philadelphia, the decision was already done.
That version of events matters because another story about Brown’s exit had been floating around since October. Former Celtics forward and NBC Sports Boston analyst Brian Scalabrine said Brown had asked to be traded and wanted Milwaukee. Brown’s representative pushed back on both claims in comments to ESPN, and Scalabrine later retracted his statement that Brown had requested a trade.
Boston officially announced the deal on July 6. In return, the Celtics got Paul George and draft compensation, including Philadelphia’s unprotected 2031 first-round pick.
In the team’s announcement, Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens described Brown as “one of the defining players of this era.”
Brown’s Boston run stretched across 10 seasons, nine of them alongside Jayson Tatum. Together they delivered the 2024 championship, with Brown taking home Finals MVP honors.
Last season, with Tatum recovering from an Achilles tear for much of the year, Brown carried more of the load and averaged nearly 29 points per game. He finished sixth in MVP voting. Not long after that, Boston shipped him to a division rival.
He arrives at Tuesday’s reunion on the back of a 29-point night in Chicago, a game that helped Philadelphia move to 9-2. Brown also added seven rebounds and four assists.
After that performance, he was asked whether he expected to hear from Tatum when Boston came to Philadelphia. Brown didn’t leave much room for speculation.
“Both of us are trying to win, so nothing to talk about,” Brown said. “Just check the ball up.”
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