“First, I was pissed off. First threw my phone across the room.”
That was Jaylen Brown speaking recently on the Last Ten podcast with Lil Baby, revealing his initial reaction when he found out he was being traded from the Boston Celtics to the Philadelphia 76ers.
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It also comes after ESPN’s Malika Andrews reported Brown and his former Celtics teammate Jayson Tatum have barely spoken since the trade.
It’s a pretty remarkable situation 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.
And just like that, one of the NBA’s most impressive duos was broken up, right in the prime of their careers.
Brown is 29 years old and Tatum is 28.
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As more details continue to emerge, it’s becoming clear there might have been more going on behind the scenes than many initially thought.
According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, the Celtics had 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.
The move shocked plenty 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.
Now more details about the split have started to emerge.
According to Andrews, Brown and Tatum have barely spoken since going their separate ways.
“I was in Philadelphia for media day,” Andrews said on ESPN.
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“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.’”
Those comments came around the same time as 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.
Brown himself has also 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.
“I feel like I went through a bunch of phases of my emotions. 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.”
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.
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.
“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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Of course, Simmons himself acknowledged he didn’t know whether that was true, but it adds to the questions surrounding what really happened between the two.
And while the full extent of what went on behind the scenes may never be revealed, the simple fact is that Boston elected to move on from Brown and Tatum as a duo while both were still in their primes.
They had already reached two NBA Finals together, won a championship and helped bring the Celtics back to the top of the NBA.
Brown will now 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.
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