July 01, 2026
Eric Canha/IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Jaylen Brown is on the Sixers. Can you believe it?
Joel Embiid and Jaylen Brown barked at each other at TD Garden in Boston on May 2. Brown was guarding Embiid – giving up several inches and many pounds – trying to keep his team afloat. But Embiid was too much man for Brown.
JOEL EMBIID LETS 'EM KNOW 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/PoqL8w5MYB
— NBA Philippines (@NBA_Philippines) May 3, 2026
For nearly a decade, the two players had been frequent postseason enemies; Brown's Celtics had triumphed over Embiid's Sixers every time. That is, until that night, when Embiid led the Sixers to a Game 7 victory, completing a 3-1 series comeback and finally vanquishing the team that had sent him home three different times.
The next time Brown steps on an NBA court, he will be Embiid's teammate.
In one of the most shocking trades in franchise history, the Sixers are sending Paul George, two first-round picks and two second-round picks to the Celtics in exchange for Brown, the five-time All-Star and 2024 NBA Finals MVP whose 10-year tenure with the Celtics came to a screeching halt this offseason.
And while this blockbuster deal represented the Sixers pouncing on a rare opportunity to pry a disgruntled star away from a rival, it is just as much about Embiid as it is about Brown.
When new Sixers President of Basketball Operations Mike Gansey replaced Daryl Morey, the prevailing assumption in public was that Gansey could look to retreat from the three-star model of roster construction which Morey boldly embraced by signing George to play alongside Embiid and Tyrese Maxey. Instead, Gansey has doubled down, only making the Sixers more reliant on their high-end talent. By any objective measure, Brown is considerably more reliable than George; he has averaged 67.4 games played per season in his decade in the NBA. Brown is more than six years younger than George and widely regarded as a much better player.
Gansey's massive gamble on Wednesday is twofold. The first component of the logic behind the deal: the Sixers are paying a worthwhile price to upgrade from George to Brown, and Brown's play in Philadelphia will prove that. The second piece of Gansey's thinking: Embiid, after playing 96 games across the last three regular seasons, can be healthy enough to pay off Brown's performance.
In an all-time stunning blockbuster, the Sixers are reportedly acquiring Jaylen Brown. How the hell did we get here? Exploring initial thoughts:https://t.co/hgop9smjMJ
— Adam Aaronson (@SixersAdam) July 1, 2026
A team with Brown and Maxey at the helm can compete with anybody on any given night. But if the $187 million owed to Embiid over the next three years leads to little on-court availability, those two players will not lead the Sixers to any places Embiid has not already taken them.
On its face, the cost here does not seem overly significant. To go from the 35-year-old George – on a two-year, $110 million contract most believe to be a negative-value asset – to the soon-to-be 30-year-old Brown – the sixth-place finisher in the 2025-26 NBA MVP race – two first-round picks and two second-round picks looks fair. That speaks to Brown's market, which was considerably less active and inspiring than the Celtics anticipated when they opened the floor for trade talks after failing to land Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Why would Brown's market crater to the point that the Sixers could acquire him at this cost? First of all, his contract is longer and larger than George's. Brown is owed about $183 million over the next three seasons; over that period the Sixers will pay Embiid, Brown and Maxey over $500 million combined. (Their deals are all lined up, and they will expire right before VJ Edgecombe's second NBA contract kicks in.)
Then there is the off-court dynamic at play. The Celtics tried to trade Brown for Antetokounmpo last week and came up short. Now, it appears their pursuit of the two-time NBA MVP was more circumstantial than anything else, and the Celtics' true goal was to wash their hands of Brown. Was that because of Brown's unusual Twitch streams and his social-media rants and his controversial comment about the 2025-26 season being his favorite in his career despite Boston's first-round exits? Maybe those were contributing factors to some degree, but the answer is probably not.
One thing that’s been reiterated to me by sources today was that Jaylen Brown never asked out or requested a trade.
— Adam Himmelsbach (@AdamHimmelsbach) July 2, 2026
Ultimately, the Celtics seem to have decided that Brown's contract was not going to be palatable moving forward in the NBA's punitive salary-cap environment. Based on their reported inability to cultivate a significant market for him, it appears that most of the league agreed with them. But Gansey, with a similarly onerous contract already on his books, turned his lemons into lemonade, giving his team much-needed stability, more youth and a new franchise centerpiece.
Gansey's ambition and fortitude is admirable. But will it lead to legitimate championship contention?
Even as Gansey shuffled the supporting cast in his first offseason, it was always going to be a major challenge for the Sixers to return Maxey, Edgecombe, George, Embiid and head coach Nick Nurse and claim with a straight face that they could be meaningfully better than they were a season ago.
Now, the Sixers have a completely different look. Yet again, the organization has created a new iteration of a star-laden Sixers team which revolves around Embiid.
The Sixers have enough confidence in Embiid's availability moving forward that they gave up two valuable, distant first-round picks in an effort to bolster their chances at being an elite team in the Eastern Conference right away. That act speaks much louder than any words could.
