When Jaylen Brown first found out he was being traded, he was furious.
“I was pissed off … threw my phone across the room,” he told the Last Ten podcast with Lil Baby about his initial reaction to being traded from the Boston Celtics to the Philadelphia 76ers.
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Just like that, one of the NBA’s most impressive duos was broken up.
But the circumstances around Brown’s split from the Celtics, and his former champion teammate Jayson Tatum, have gone beyond business and into more murky waters.
It’s been reported that Brown and Tatum have barely spoken since the trade, with speculation ramping up over an ugly falling out.
The rumours are remarkable when you consider everything the two achieved together during their time in Boston.
The duo were both No. 3 picks in the 2016 and 2017 NBA Drafts, won an NBA Championship together and helped the Celtics complete their rebuild following the Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett era.
But this past offseason saw Brown traded to Eastern Conference rivals Philadelphia while the duo was right in the prime of their careers.
Brown is 29 years old and Tatum is 28.
The move shocked many in and around the NBA, including former player Jeff Teague.
“Damn can’t believe that s**t went down… That’s some bulls**t really,” Teague said on the Club 520 Podcast.
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Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum helped lead the Boston Celtics to the 2024 NBA Championship, defeating the Dallas Mavericks in five games.Source: Getty Images
As such, questions about what was happening behind the scenes at the Celtics have only grown.
According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, the franchise reached a point where they no longer believed they could win another championship with the pair.
“Whether it was personal situations between the two players or whether it was just the on-court basketball fit, the Celtics had just made the determination that, moving forward, they can no longer win a championship, clearly, with Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum,” Charania reported on ESPN following the trade.
Adding fuel to that fire was a report from ESPN’s Malika Andrews, who claimed that Brown and Tatum are virtually on non-speaking terms.
“I was in Philadelphia for media day,” Andrews said on ESPN. “I asked Jaylen Brown whether or not he’d spoken to Jayson Tatum since the exit, and he was a little bit murky, but the essence was: ‘No, not really.
“I went my way and he went his way.’”
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Those comments came around the same time the 76ers and Celtics faced each other in the preseason.
Both players were warming up on the court at the same time, but there was no obvious interaction between the former teammates, which only fuelled the speculation further.
Jayson Tatum has addressed the speculation surrounding his relationship with former Celtics teammate Jaylen Brown following their split.Source: AFP
The duo were the faces of Boston’s 2024 NBA Championship team, defeating the Dallas Mavericks 4-1 in the NBA Finals.
That title came just two years after the Celtics were beaten 4-2 by the Golden State Warriors in the 2022 Finals.
But despite their success together, there have also been questions surrounding the relationship between the two stars.
Many around the NBA have viewed Tatum as the better player of the pair, but it was Brown who took home both the Eastern Conference Finals MVP and NBA Finals MVP awards during their championship run.
And it’s something Brown also reflected on recently when speaking on the Last Ten podcast, appearing to suggest that not everyone was happy with the decision to trade him.
“I think one of my highest moments in just winning a championship,” Brown said.
“I didn’t play to win no award, when they gave me the MVP, they gave me 2 MVPs by the way, just for those, you know what I mean.
Jaylen Brown has opened up on his shock trade from the Boston Celtics to the Philadelphia 76ers and the emotions he experienced following the move.Source: Getty Images
“But when I won, I was never expecting that. I didn’t care nothing about that… It mattered way more to some people than it ever mattered to me.
“So when I won, you could see in my face that I was shocked.
“Cause it didn’t change no reaction if anybody else would have won. But that don’t always be the case when the shoe was on the other foot.”
While Brown didn’t name anyone in those comments, it’s hard not to wonder who he was referring to.
But according to Bill Simmons, there may have been some other moments behind the scenes that caused frustration between the pair.
Speaking on The Bill Simmons Podcast, Simmons claimed there had been talk of Brown being unhappy when Tatum returned from his Achilles injury and was announced last during the Celtics’ starting lineup introductions.
“It seemed a little dicier behind the scenes… there’s stuff that pops out after… I don’t want to name names, but there were a couple people who mentioned – who knows if this is true – it bothered him (Brown) when Tatum came back and Tatum was announced last,” Simmons said.
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While unclear, Simmons’ speculation adds to the questions surrounding what really happened between the two.
Tatum has also spoken about his relationship with Brown, denying some of the narratives surrounding the pair when speaking on The Dan Patrick Show.
“For me, I love that guy… You can’t talk about him without talking about me, and vice-versa,” Tatum told Patrick.
Nonetheless, the questions linger as Brown prepares to help lead the charge alongside LeBron James, Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey in Philadelphia.
Meanwhile, Tatum will lead a new-look Celtics side alongside Paul George as Boston looks to climb back to the top of the NBA.
After everything they achieved together, Brown and Tatum will now look to win another NBA Championship, but this time without each other.
‘IT’S BEEN CRAZY’
Meanwhile, Brown himself has opened up about the trade in recent days, revealing on the Last Ten podcast how he reacted when he first found out he was leaving Boston.
“It’s just been a crazy summer, ’cause I wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t expecting to get traded, even though it’s always a possibility, right?” Brown said.
“But I’m just coming off my best year. I definitely wasn’t expecting, as an MVP candidate. [We had] Coach got Coach of the Year, got Front Office of the Year.
“So, I’m thinking like everything, at least for another year, it should have been cool.”
And when speaking about his emotions following the trade, Brown admitted he went through plenty of different stages.
“Like first I was pissed off. First threw my phone across the room,” Brown said.
“Then I kind of was detached from the situation. I got excited after that. Then I came back to Boston. When I was traveling, I got sad again, and now I’m just ready.
“So I just feel like I went through so many different phases over the last couple months.”