Jayson Tatum didn’t need much time to make his feelings clear after Jaylen Brown’s move to the Philadelphia 76ers. In his first public appearance since the trade, Tatum spoke plainly about what it means to lose a teammate he’s shared so much with over the years.
“The NBA is an incredible business; it’s an incredible job, but there are some downsides to the business and moments like this, where you just kind of feel like you’re going to be on the team with somebody, because that’s all you know," Tatum said at an event for his children's book.
“It’s just like, one day you find out that they’re no longer on your team anymore. Going into the facility, and knowing that you have different teammates, and somebody that you’ve been to war with, essentially, is on a different team."
That’s the reality now for the Celtics and the 76ers, who sit in the Atlantic Division and will see plenty of each other. For Boston, the end of the “Two Jays” era closes the book on one of the league’s most durable pairings, a partnership that lasted nearly a decade and kept showing up when the noise around it said otherwise.
Brown and Tatum pushed Boston to the NBA Finals in 2022 and again in 2024. The Celtics won the latter trip, and Brown took home Finals MVP. Through all the talk about tension between them, the two kept backing each other up until the very end.
After staying quiet for about a week, Tatum had already posted an emotional goodbye on his IG story. This time, he addressed it directly, and the message was simple: the business side of the league can hit hard, especially when it splits up a bond like this.
Now the matchup shifts from partnership to rivalry. And when Boston and Philadelphia meet, Tatum and Brown figure to be staring each other down plenty.
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