For nine straight seasons, Jayson Tatum could count on the same familiar face beside him in Boston. That changed this summer, and the Celtics star says the news hit him harder and faster than anyone outside the room could’ve guessed.
Tatum has been relatively quiet publicly since Boston sent Jaylen Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers, but he recently described the moment he found out. The reaction was instant.
“We were in Vegas, I just got done playing pickup,” Tatum recalled. “(Celtics player development coach God Shammgod Jr.) walks over.
He hands me a towel. He’s like, ‘Yo, put this over your face.
Don’t react. They just traded him.’
I’m like, ‘Oh (expletive)! Where?’
He said, ‘Philly.’ You traded him down the street?
I was just as caught off guard as the rest of the world.”
What stunned Tatum most wasn’t just that Brown was dealt. It was where he ended up.
Boston and Philadelphia have spent years battling as division rivals, which means Tatum now has to line up against his former teammate at least four times every season. Even so, there’s no bitterness in how he talks about Brown.
Instead, Tatum still measures their partnership by what they built together: two Finals appearances and an NBA championship.
“I’ve been very transparent about how thankful I personally am for our relationship and what we were able to accomplish,” Tatum stated. “Jayson and Jaylen, you won’t ever be able to talk about one of us without the other. And just our ability to grow up as kids and go through our ups and downs, and people talking about one of us had to go, and we couldn’t win together, and - there’s a lot of (expletive) that we had to deal with.”
Tatum didn’t pretend the pairing was always smooth. It wasn’t. But he made clear that the friction never erased the value of what they did side by side, or the way they pushed each other.
“I knew every time I stepped on that court that when it was time to go to war…and No. 7 was over there, I knew that he was going to do whatever it took for us to try to win,” Tatum added. “The way we pushed each other, I definitely made him better.
He made me better, and we made our team better. We made this organization better.
We won a championship. We are forever etched in stone in NBA history.
We held up that trophy. It won’t ever be forgotten.”
The numbers in their shared story are impressive, but the bigger point is simpler: Tatum and Brown grew up together in the league, advanced together, and stayed together long enough to actually finish the job. That kind of partnership is rare, especially with so many voices trying to break it apart along the way.
Now both players have turned the page. The next time they meet, there should be no shortage of fire. But Tatum’s words make one thing clear: whatever comes next, the respect is still there.
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