July 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\nWhen we woke up on July 1, all the talk \u2014 including from league sources speaking to NBC Sports \u2014 was about how there was no market for a Jaylen Brown trade. The question was whether Brad Stevens and the Boston front office would be forced to tell Brown there was no trade and that they needed to work things out, or whether the relationship was too fractured. Well, we got that answer.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s pick the winners and losers from this trade, but first a reminder of who was involved.<\/p>\n
Philadelphia receives: Jaylen Brown
Boston receives: Paul George, two first-round picks (2028, 2031), two second-round picks (2028, 2030)<\/p>\n
Winner: Philadelphia 76ers<\/p>\n
Philadelphia was already a win-now team (Joel Embiid is already 32, the clock is ticking), and it just landed an All-NBA player in his prime, someone who just finished sixth in MVP voting last season. And as a bonus, they got off a contract considered one of the worst in the league in Paul George.<\/p>\n
Philadelphia got the best player in this trade, and now look at their starting five:
PG: Tyrese Maxey
SG: VG Edgecombe
SF: Jaylen Brown
PF: Dean Wade
C: Joel Embiid<\/p>\n
There is a price for Philadelphia here, and that starts with Brown being owed more than Paul George, a little over $180 million across the next three seasons \u2014 and he\u2019s eligible for a two-year extension worth over $140 million. Then there is giving up the draft picks, there is real value in two first-round picks.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s the cost to turn a team into a contender, the 76ers would gladly pay it. And if Embiid is healthy, this team can compete with the Knicks (and maybe Detroit or Indiana or anyone else) to win the East.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the definition of a win.<\/p>\n
Loser: Boston Celtics<\/p>\n
The Celtics flat out got worse with this trade.<\/p>\n
This was a team that won the title a couple of years ago and entered this year\u2019s playoffs as the betting favorite. This trade made them actively worse while Jayson Tatum is in his prime. They are not as bad as some pundits want it to sound \u2014 they still have Derrick White, Tatum, George (if he\u2019s healthy), Payton Pritchard and more. This is still a top-six team in the East. But they got worse and are not contenders as we stand here.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not in the room and it\u2019s hard to get my head around what Brad Stevens and company were thinking. According to the reporting from people close to the Celtics, Brown did not ask for a trade. Stevens said multiple times that he and Brown had a good relationship. Yet this relationship was somehow so broken that Stevens felt forced to make a below-market offer in what feels like a panicked, rushed trade.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not all bad. Boston got two very valuable picks, and George is a solid role player at this point in his career who can help the Celtics, but I don\u2019t get giving up an All-NBA player for this package. It\u2019s not enough. And that the Celtics let it get to the point that they felt they had to make this trade is an indictment of them.<\/p>\n
Winner: Baylor Scheierman<\/p>\n
Maybe we should throw Hugo Gonzalez into this mix as well, but the Celtics\u2019 young backup wings had earned more run based on their play last season. Now, they are about to be thrust into a much bigger role and get a real opportunity. They earned the chance, we\u2019ll see what they do with it.<\/p>\n
Winner: Jaylen Brown<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know that Jaylen Brown wanted out of Boston. What I do know is he said this past season \u2014 with the ball in his hands as the primary shot creator, the guy on the top of opponents\u2019 scouting reports \u2014 was his favorite in the NBA. Then he should love this next season. It\u2019s not that Philadelphia doesn\u2019t have other shot creators and guys who need touches \u2014 Maxey, Embiid \u2014 but Brown is going to get the chance to be the headliner of a contender. You don\u2019t trade for Brown to play a role, you trade for him to take charge, and that\u2019s what the 76ers will ask him to do.<\/p>\n
Loser: Jayson Tatum<\/p>\n
Jayson Tatum is in his prime and wants to win \u2014 and his team just took a step backward. I don\u2019t pretend to know how tight Tatum and Brown are, or what Tatum says about Brown away from the cameras, but he cannot be happy about his team trading away a Finals MVP and turning a division rival into a contender. More is going to fall on Tatum\u2019s shoulders, and while that may be good for his personal stats, it\u2019s not going to be good for the team. Or helping them win another ring.<\/p>\n
Winner: 76ers fans<\/p>\n
Do I even need to explain this one? Philadelphia fans have every reason to be hyped up heading into next season because their team just made the leap to contender status. That\u2019s not a ring, but there is a genuine hope for one now and that\u2019s all a fan can ask for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard to describe just how out of left field this trade felt when it landed, so let\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":773917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-773916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/773917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}