The Boston Celtics are trading Jaylen Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers in exchange for Paul George, two first-round picks (2028 and 2031) and two second-round picks (2028 and 2030), according to ESPN. The 2028 first-rounder could convert from a first to a pick swap that is more favorable to the Celtics, while the 2031 pick is unprotected.
The stunning deal marks the end of Brown’s enormously successful 10-season run in Boston. The No. 3 overall pick in the 2016 NBA Draft made five All-Star teams with the Celtics. He averaged at least 20 points for seven consecutive seasons, took the Celtics to the Eastern Conference Finals six times, the NBA Finals twice, and won Finals MVP as Boston won its 18th NBA championship in 2024. Now, he will continue his career in a rival city alongside a core of Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe.
Brown played alongside Jayson Tatum since Boston drafted the latter in 2017, but rumors about the Celtics splitting up the pair were common for much of their run together. The Celtics were linked to superstars like Anthony Davis and Kevin Durant over the years, but never pulled the trigger on a trade for Brown during his joint ascent with Tatum. The Celtics were rewarded for that faith with the 2024 title, but things slowly broke down from there.
Tatum tore his Achilles during Boston’s title defense in 2025, and he missed most of the 2025-26 season. With Tatum sidelined, Brown had the best statistical season of his career in leading the Celtics to 56 wins, but Boston blew a 3-1 lead and lost Game 7 of its first-round series against the 76ers with Tatum out. That series exposed holes in Boston’s roster that would be hard to address with both Tatum and Brown earning supermax salaries in this enormously restrictive CBA environment.
Brown responded by venting on Twitch after the Celtics were eliminated, claiming the NBA had an agenda against him. Perhaps just as notably, he called this season his “favorite year” of his basketball career rather than the 2024 title season. The Celtics, meanwhile, spent most of June negotiating a trade of Brown to the Milwaukee Bucks for Giannis Antetokounmpo. When Antetokounmpo was ultimately dealt to the Miami Heat, Boston elected to move on from Brown anyway, sending him to Philadelphia in a shocker.
For much of the past two years, Philadelphia’s destiny was tied to two aging and injury-prone players. George has played just 78 regular-season games over two seasons with the 76ers, and he is entering his age-36 season. Coupled with the frequent absences of Embiid, Philadelphia appeared to be stuck with two supermax contracts that were aging badly.
But George, following a 25-game suspension, returned to finish out the season strong. He averaged an efficient 17.4 points per game in the playoff series win over the Celtics, and now, he’s headed to Boston to serve as their Brown replacement. With Brown only 29 years old, the 76ers have improved at the forward spot with a player six years younger than the one that they sent out.
Now, if Embiid can only stay healthy, the 76ers have a real path to genuine championship contention in a crowded Eastern Conference. Let’s grade the trade.
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Philadelphia 76ers: A+
Landing Brown while moving off George’s contract? An outright steal
When I ranked the worst contracts in the NBA in March, George, making supermax money ($54.1 million) for the next two seasons, ranked No. 5. At the time, that was a fairly common sentiment. He was out at that point due to a 25-game PED suspension, but even before that, he was inefficiently averaging a pretty modest 16.2 points per game and had far less defensive impact than at his peak. A good player, but a severely overpaid one whose 36th birthday was looming. The assumption was that Philadelphia would have to attach draft capital to move off of his contract.
What changed after that? He returned from that suspension and played 10 nearly star-level regular-season games. He was fantastic in the playoffs, making nearly half of his 3-pointers and turning back the defensive clock against the Celtics. Essentially, in 21 games, George went from immovable to the only player involved in a trade for Brown. For a brief, fleeting moment, another team considered George to be a positive-value asset, or at least not so overwhelmingly negative that he would impede a trade like this. Was it just shooting variance? Did the 25-game rest revive him? It just seems hard to imagine that a 36-year-old could turn the clock back like that in any sort of permanent way.
Brown is coming off a Second-Team All-NBA season. There is a credible reason to believe that the season was fool’s gold. Brown shot just under 51% on mid-range shots and just under 71% on restricted area shots from October through December. That’s around the point at which some people tried to nudge him into an MVP conversation he really never should have been a part of. After Jan. 1, he fell back down to earth, falling to around 41% on mid-range jumpers and 69% in the restricted area. He is not, in fact, a Kevin Durant-level individual scorer. But the 76ers did not pay a Durant-level price.
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