Jaylen Brown isn’t pretending this move feels normal. He stood at a dais Thursday afternoon at the Francis J. Myers Rec Center in Philadelphia, backed by 76ers logos and introduced by nameplate, and still managed to make the moment sound like a transition he’s only beginning to absorb.
“It’s been a lot of emotions … I’m still processing it to some degree,” he said. “I was [in Boston] a third of my life.
I’ve met some people, some lifelong friends, people I’ll still be connected to. But [when] you’re starting something new, it's an end of something else.
So this is just a process.”
Brown is a Sixer now, a sentence that still lands strangely after a summer of Celtics trade chatter finally turned into reality. He admitted the shock hit hard when the deal came through.
“When I first got traded, I threw my phone across the room,” he said.
He didn’t go any further than that, even though he’s hinted before that there’s more behind the move from his perspective. For now, Brown said he’s keeping that story to himself.
“My mind is so focused on what's in front of me,” he said. “To be honest, I'm moving on.
Maybe one day I’ll share the details of how everything transpired and all the moving parts that took place in this. Obviously, it's a lot of speculation.
I feel no need to chime in on it because I'm focused on what's in front of me.”
And what’s in front of him is a Philadelphia team that, on paper, is built to contend in the Eastern Conference. Brown made it clear he’s not here for individual hardware or the usual star-player side quests.
“At this point in my career, nothing else has really moves me,” he said. “I don't care about the MVP awards or Finals MVP.
None of that stuff really moves me. It's nice, but the only thing that's gonna move me is doing something collectively, so a championship.
So that's what I'm looking forward to.”
That journey will run through Boston at least four times in the regular season, with a possible fifth meeting if the in-season tournament lines up that way. It’s an unusual twist for an All-NBA player in his prime to land with a rival, but Brown wouldn’t take the bait when asked about any extra juice those games might carry.
“It's just one day at a time,” Brown said. “That's all I got."
He did address Jayson Tatum, though. Brown said the two haven’t really spoken since the trade, a detail that will fuel plenty of speculation, but he stressed there’s no bad blood on his side.
“Anybody that you win a championship [with], you would think that's what a brotherhood or a lifelong legacy would entail,” Brown said. “Obviously, there's ups and downs in any type of relationship, for sure.
But on my end, it's nothing but respect. Besides when he plays the Sixers, I hope he does well …everything for me is just based in respect.”
Brown also took time to look back on Boston with clear appreciation. He said the city gave him major years of growth, both personally and professionally, and called his 10 seasons there “a perfect cycle, perfect number for completion.” He also pointed to his time in the community, at university, and in learning how to shape his philanthropy and carry himself.
“I look back at the city of Boston, and I'm grateful,” he said. “I've been able to develop as a man, as a human being there, spend a lot of time in the community, a lot of time at university, studying, learning, figuring out how to approach how I wanted to go about my philanthropy, figure out how to I wanted to approach how to carry myself.
“A lot of my most important years, my most developmental years as a young man, I spent in Boston. I got there at 19.
… I'm very grateful for my experience, my tenure in Boston. 10 years is a perfect cycle, perfect number for completion. We won a championship, and I have nothing but respect for the city of Boston, but now it's time to move forward a little bit.”
For now, that means Philadelphia, a new start, and a star forward still deciding how much of the Celtics ending he ever wants to explain.
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