Another blockbuster: Jaylen Brown getting traded by Celtics to 76ers for Paul George, draft picks

Jaylen Brown's time in Boston has come to a surprising end, with the Celtics deciding to trade him to one of their most storied rivals. Brown — the 2024 NBA Finals MVP, a five-time All-Star and the league's fourth-leading scorer this past season — is getting traded by the Celtics to the Philadelphia 76ers, a person with knowledge of the deal's terms said Wednesday. Boston is getting Paul George, along with a slew of draft capital that could become two first-round picks and two second-round picks, said the person who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the trade does not yet have the required league approvals. ESPN first reported the trade agreement, and the terms were later confirmed by The Boston Globe. Add this move to the list of blockbuster moves across the NBA so far this offseason. LeBron James is leaving the Los Angeles Lakers as a free agent, and now this trade joins a long list of moves that involve All-Star-caliber players — like Giannis Antetokounmpo going from Milwaukee to Miami, Kawhi Leonard and Brandon Ingram headlining a swap between the Toronto Raptors and Los Angeles Clippers, and Ja Morant getting traded to Portland by Memphis. Now, this. It's a move that breaks up what has been one of the league's most successful 1-2 punches in Brown and Jayson Tatum, who helped carry the Celtics to the 2024 NBA title. Tatum missed most of this past season while recovering from an Achilles tear that happened during the 2025 playoffs, meaning Brown had to carry even more of the load for Boston — and he wound up with career-best averages of 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds and 5.1 assists per game. It seemed, though, that Brown has felt underappreciated, especially after it became known that Boston had included him in trade talks with Milwaukee when Antetokounmpo was on the market. "Nobody has won more combined regular-season and playoff games since I entered the league 10 years ago," Brown posted on social media over the weekend. He's right: The Celtics have won 523 games with Brown in the lineup, including playoff contests, which is six more than Denver has won with Nikola Jokic over that span. Brown now gets to be part of a squad in Philadelphia alongside guard Tyrese Maxey and center Joel Embiid — someone who Brown recently called a flopper on a livestream. "Joel Embiid is a great player, one of the best bigs in (expletive) basketball history," Brown said. "Flops. He know it. This ain't breaking news." Brown, Maxey (the league's No. 5 scorer this past season) and Embiid (a two-time NBA scoring champion) could become a positively frightening trio in Philadelphia, and the Celtics deciding to play a role in creating such a triumvirate only adds to the intrigue surrounding why they wanted to trade Brown in the first place. The trade ends a tremendously disappointing two-year stint for George, who was traded with two years left on a four-year, $212 million free-agent contract. The 36-year-old George never approached his nine-time All-Star form in Philadelphia and his tenure was marred by a 25-game suspension last season for flunking a drug test. He averaged just 16.7 points in his two seasons in Philadelphia after topping the 20-point mark in nine straight seasons with Indiana, Oklahoma City and the Los Angeles Clippers. Brown is the latest big name brought in to team with All-Stars and franchise cornerstones Embiid and Maxey. Brown can try and lead the Sixers to their first title since 1983; a feat a steady string of stars from Ben Simmons to James Harden to George failed to do when paired with Embiid and Maxey to make a Big Three. George cited mental health reasons as to why he failed a drug test and was suspended in late January for violating the terms of the NBA's anti-drug program. His first year in Philly was marred by knee and adductor injuries that resulted in the forward having one of the worst years of his NBA career. George averaged 16.2 points in just 41 games, easily his lowest scoring average in a full season since he averaged 12.1 points for Indiana in his second NBA season. He then had surgery in July on his left knee after he was injured during a workout and missed the first 12 games of this past season. This was the first blockbuster pulled off under new team president Mike Gansey, who replaced the fired Daryl Morey. Morey was fired after the Sixers failed to advance out of the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs in his tenure and they were swept by the eventual NBA champion Knicks in the second round last season — but only after erasing a 3-1 deficit to oust Boston in Round 1. "Philadelphia is a good basketball team," Brown said after the Game 7 loss to the 76ers, surely not knowing at that time that he would be joining them a couple months later. His job now will be to make that good basketball team even better.