Before a star changes teams in the NBA, they typically spend years on whiteboards and spreadsheets in their eventual home, first as an idea, then as a target, and finally as a plan of action. Assets have to be pooled. Salary must be cleared. The very concept needs to be floated through whispers and back channels, focus tested by the reps and advisers who circle every All-NBA talent. These things take time, to the point that when someone like Giannis Antetokounmpo finally does get traded to the Miami Heat, it happens after a half decade of legwork, if not more.
And then there’s whatever the hell just happened with Jaylen Brown. The Philadelphia 76ers might be as surprised as anyone to find the former Celtic on their roster, fresh off the best season of his basketball career. Brown had clearly been available on the trade market, but he was available to Philadelphia only because of the plans upon plans upon plans that fell through. In the end, it wasn’t Antetokounmpo or Kawhi Leonard or some haul of young talent that pried Brown out of Boston. It was Paul George, who’s carrying one of the most bloated contracts in the league, and a few underwhelming draft picks. The Celtics must have aspired for more than scooping a few measly first-rounders off the floor in exchange for one of their franchise players, but they also apparently decided on Wednesday night that the urgency to move Brown outweighed the desire for anything resembling fair value.
Given how quickly the market turned, Philly didn’t turn itself into a landing spot for Brown so much as it just became one. This opportunity was too tantalizing for the Sixers to pass up, so far above and beyond the kind of player they would otherwise be able to acquire. And with that turn of events comes the work of now incorporating one of the league’s top scorers into a complex roster that already had plenty of moving parts. Tyrese Maxey, like Brown, is coming off an All-NBA season after driving his own team for the first time. VJ Edgecombe is bursting with the kind of potential that demands to be stoked and fed. Joel Embiid looms large, as both one of the most purely talented players in the sport and a walking existential crisis for a franchise that has tried to rely on him but can’t.
The success of these Sixers will likely come down to the way they balance insistence and accommodation. They’re hardly lacking for collective ability; all four of Philly’s cornerstones are three-level scorers, an absurd luxury that no other team can match. The Sixers already had one relentless driver in Maxey, but Brown doubles down on that strength, matching Maxey’s pure stop-and-go speed with a physical, punishing attack. Few opponents will have defenders cut out to handle both, and even fewer will also be able to account for Embiid’s scoring binges. Those that somehow manage to batten down the hatches will likely leave themselves exposed to Edgecombe picking on their worst perimeter defender.
And that’s why you call a trade like this into the league office as fast as you can and figure out the rest as you go. Brown isn’t without his quirks, and his contract—which will pay out $185 million over the next three seasons—has a way of electrifying every conversation around him. Swapping out George—who played more of a utility role for the Sixers—for Brown will be a shock to Philly’s system. Something will have to give between Maxey’s rising stardom, Embiid’s on-ball dominance, and the go-to role Brown flourished in last season. Part of the reason Brown is now in Philly is because of his unmistakable ambition, but Maxey is too good to sidetrack his own progression in leading a team. It’s easy to say that Embiid should take a back seat to both given his struggles to stay healthy, but he doesn’t really know any other way to play; when he isn’t featured like a star, Embiid often just stands around on the perimeter like a vestige of an era gone by.
But who are the Sixers to turn down the challenges that come with adding one of the best players in the league? When he’s hyper-motivated and ready to use every possession as an opportunity to embarrass his former team? How could they pass up a title-validated, two-way star in his prime for the sake of a roster that so definitively was not in the same class as the Knicks? Jaylen Brown has crashed into this Sixers team like a meteor. Figuring out what to do with the space rock is the kind of challenge that can reinvigorate a franchise.
Particularly when the Eastern Conference more broadly is already in a state of such incredible flux. The Knicks are the most stable contender by far—but even they lost a valued rotation piece in Mitchell Robinson, to the now reimagined Celtics. Boston might be the single most difficult contender to pin down, and that’s before accounting for whatever other moves it might make with the draft picks it acquired for Brown. Toronto accelerated its plans by going back to the future with Kawhi. The Heat are vying for more than the play-in for the first time in years, and the Pacers will be squarely back in the mix. The 60-win Pistons have reshuffled their lineup; the Hawks have picked up a few pieces out of the bargain bin; and the Cavs haven’t made any moves of note yet, but LeBron could change that in a heartbeat and give the East yet another jolt.
That’s nine teams that are probably convinced they’re going to end up in the top six, to say nothing of the Magic or Hornets. What a beautifully muddled mess the East has become. If the cost of the NBA’s current parity is that it makes it more difficult for the Celtics to keep an expensive star like Brown, the payoff is that trading him away has unstuck the Sixers and turned them into a real factor in the East. Getting off of George’s contract was its own miracle. Turning George into a player of Brown’s caliber was a possibility beyond comprehension.
No matter what becomes of the Sixers, this is a reality-bending, precedent-obliterating move. Bizarre. Unheard of. The trade machine is overheating as we speak with the most preposterous deals imaginable, because even weeks upon weeks of trade speculation failed to produce a return package this meager for Brown. No amount of planning can compare with the windfall of being a team in the right place at the right time.
