Besides the Luka Dončić stunner, you could argue that this summer’s Jaylen Brown blockbuster was the most surprising trade in recent NBA history. A former Finals MVP coming off of his best season traded for … Paul George? Someone widely treated as one of the NBA’s worst contracts and half of the draft capital a superstar typically fetches? The reactions were, obviously, extreme. Celtics fans revolted. Pundits expected a meaningful drop-off for Boston. Trade graders like myself pilloried Brad Stevens and his front office for moving a 29-year-old All-NBA forward for what appeared to be far less than fair value.
And yet, as Brown prepares to face his former employer for the first time, the two teams sit neck-and-neck in the Eastern Conference. The 76ers top the standings at 9-2. The Celtics are right behind them at 8-2, but have the East’s best net rating at +11.6. While Philadelphia has thus far gotten exactly what it wanted out of the trade, the Celtics seemingly have as well. So with their first of potentially many high-stakes clashes this season set for Tuesday night (8 p.m. ET, NBC/fubo), let’s revisit the trade and hand out revised grades for the offseason’s most impactful trade.
Boston Celtics: B-
July grade: D-
The backlash to the George-for-Brown trade was fundamentally centered on two premises:
- A team trading a First or Second Team All-NBA player in his prime should expect four or five first-round picks worth of value in return.
- George, who played just 78 total regular-season games as a 76er with career-worst numbers and was entering his age-36 season, was likely to decline and was critically overpaid on a supermax contract. At best, he represented neutral value, but potentially represented negative value.
The first premise was, frankly, outdated in the apron era. Yes, Kevin Durant netted four first-round picks, a first-round swap, and players who would go on to net six additional first-round picks and another swap, but that was all the way back in February 2023, and that trade completely derailed Phoenix’s future. The James Harden trade played out similarly for the Nets. Teams are more skittish about all-in moves for older players than they’ve ever been.
There have been outlier, extremely high-cost trades since then, but all came under somewhat irreplicable circumstances. Mikal Bridges netted five first-round picks and a swap, for instance, but he never misses games, came with two years of cheap cost-control and played collegiately with several other key Knicks. New York viewed him as the finishing piece of a championship team, and the Knicks were ultimately proven correct.
Desmond Bane wasn’t as underpaid, but he fit the extremely narrow niche the Magic needed: someone who could enhance their offense without commanding high usage on a team that was already locked into two max-salary shot-creators or compromising their defensive identity. There were maybe a handful of players in the NBA Orlando could have targeted for that role, and Bane, amazingly, was probably the only one available. In an extremely injured Eastern Conference, the Magic tried to be opportunistic. That’s where these lopsided trades happen. They’re almost always circumstantial.
The more typical star trade scenario is something closer to what the Milwaukee Bucks went through with Giannis Antetokounmpo. The player is older, attempts to fix things internally have failed, and the relationship between star and team is no longer tenable. The acquiring team typically has a leverage advantage, and that’s especially true in the apron era, where paying the sort of giant salaries these stars get in their early 30s carries far more risk than reward. Antetokounmpo netted three picks, one swap and a handful of players that won’t be foundational for the Bucks. We know Antetokounmpo had more trade value than Brown because the Celtics tried to trade Brown and more for Antetokounmpo, but a deal wasn’t struck. So if Antetokounmpo, a two-time MVP, was worth three-and-a-half picks plus some player value, Brown being worth two picks and some player value feels in line with the new, cost-conscious NBA.
And then of course, there’s the matter of what the player value actually was. That brings us to George. From November through January of last season, George averaged just 16 points on 42-38-86 shooting. This was in line with his 2024-25 performance, and together, the year-and-a-half sample felt reliable for an aging star. Well, George then got suspended 25 games. When he returned in March, he was a 21-point scorer on better shooting splits who looked rejuvenated defensively. He went on to torch the Celtics in the first round of the playoffs. Most of us expected George to look more like the player he was before that suspension in Boston. The Celtics bet that he would look like who he was after, and thus far, they’ve looked correct.
The raw numbers are superb: 20.4 points, 47-43-81 shooting and his highest assist and rebounding rates since he left the Clippers. The fit has been even better. Much was made of how low many advanced metrics are on Brown relative to his reputation, but the more significant story here was always his outlier status within Boston’s intended team structure. Joe Mazzulla wants to maximize 3-point attempt rate. George’s 3-point attempt rate so far this season (51.4%) is nearly twice Brown’s (27.8%). Brad Stevens spoke openly about not wanting to concentrate usage in two players, and George’s usage rate is nearly eight percentage points lower than Brown’s was a year ago. The Celtics wanted this sort of player in their system and next to Jayson Tatum, and it’s working.
Yet just as vitally, George is helping the Celtics diversify a bit as a team. The Celtics generated the second-fewest turnovers in the NBA last season. They’re averaging the eighth-most in the NBA thus far this season, and George is the single biggest reason why. Only Dyson Daniels and Scottie Barnes are averaging more deflections, and among players who have played at least four games, only Daniels and Kris Dunn are generating more steals.
The Celtics had the lowest free-throw attempt rate in the NBA last season as well. They’re right around the middle of the pack this year. Tatum is the one drawing most of those fouls, but George is a critical part of the structure that gets Tatum to the line. Brown can be a bit of a ball-stopper. Among true forwards, only Kawhi Leonard and Zion Williamson averaged more seconds per touch than Brown a year ago. The average George touch this season lasts 3.3 seconds compared to just under five for Brown a year ago. It’s simply easier to compromise a defense when the ball is moving and players are making quick decisions. That’s how defenses are forced into rotation and wind up fouling out of desperation. As a team, the Celtics have the sixth-lowest average time per touch this season compared to the eighth-highest a year ago.
Even the contract feels a bit more palatable now than it did at the time. Brown would have become eligible for an extension on his supermax contract last offseason, and based on the season he had, he would have been more than justified in asking for one. The Celtics, clearly, had no plans to commit extra years to Brown on top of the three that he was already owed. George isn’t quite living up to his supermax price tag thus far this season, but his deal is a year shorter and comes with no such extension pressure.
If anything, his player option for next season opens some interesting doors for the Celtics if they decide they’re happy with this partnership. As of right now, the Celtics have around $3 million in first-apron room for the 2027-28 season based on current projections. Say they want to use the full mid-level exception on a free agent or perhaps need a bit more wiggle room to make a trade. They could theoretically go to George and ask him to lower his cap figure in exchange for another year of security. Turning a one-year, $56.6 million deal into, say, a two-year, $90 million deal could make sense for both sides provided George sustains this level of play.
The reasonable fear that he might not is why we stop at a “B-” for Boston. This is still his age-36 season. George has been injury-prone for most of his career. He presumably will not get a 25-game break this season, and even if he’s this good all year, all of these benefits he’s brought to Boston are somewhat regular-season-centric. The playoffs are a different game, one that leans much more into Brown’s strengths as an individual shotmaker and man-to-man defender. The Celtics still never get to the rim. Their best answer for opposing star guards is probably Jordan Walsh, whose offense makes him hard to play for too long. If Boston flames out in the playoffs, we might view Brown’s absence as one of the bigger reasons why. The path to actually winning this trade gets paved in April and May.
But for now, at least, it’s starting to make sense. The Celtics added two premium draft assets in a way that allowed them to maintain their existing playing style and avoid taking a major step back in the present. They sidestepped what probably would have been an ugly contract negotiation, and the more barbs get traded in the press, the clearer it becomes that this situation simply was not salvageable. The Celtics had to trade Brown. The offers were far lower than we anticipated. Boston still managed to make the best of less-than-ideal circumstances and still factors prominently into the Eastern Conference championship picture.
Philadelphia 76ers: A+
July grade: A+
Funnily enough, you could pretty easily argue that George would actually be a far better fit for this iteration of the 76ers than Brown is. Philadelphia’s 20th-ranked offense has a bottom-five 3-point attempt rate and the eighth-highest average seconds per touch in the NBA. The Sixers could stand to trade some of that dribbling for a bit more shooting. Considering how lethal their transition offense can be, George’s turnover generation would also fit this defense like a glove. The 76ers will get better offensively. We’re still in tiny-sample season, and everyone’s still learning how to play together. But George is undeniably the easier player to fit onto a roster like this than Brown.
Of course, the 76ers wouldn’t have a roster like this without Brown. Widespread reporting has made it clear that Philadelphia’s acquisition of Brown was what first caught the attention of LeBron James in free agency. If Brown was indeed a swing factor in the 76ers getting LeBron, that assuages any short-term salary concerns for Brown. For God’s sake, the Philadelphia 76ers have LeBron James on a minimum contract. Even if Brown is overpaid, the surplus value on the James contract more than offsets any negative value there.
The 76ers have far less reason to fear an extension than Boston did as well. By trading Brown, the Celtics subjected him to the NBA’s six-month extend-and-trade restrictions. That meant he could only tack one year onto his contract rather than two, and because he has multiple years remaining on his contract, he’s not eligible to extend during the season. The 76ers therefore get to table those discussions until the offseason at the earliest, and remember, at that point, Brown will be negotiating off of the more modest statistics that come with sacrificing for the sake of a superteam. It’s simply easier to envision Brown extending at less than the max in Philadelphia than it would have been in Boston.
Speaking of sacrificing, remember the whole “Jaylen Brown wants his own team” narrative from last offseason? For all we know, it was true at the time and might have remained true had he stayed with the Celtics. So far, that has been a complete non-issue for the 76ers. Brown is currently sporting his lowest usage rate since 2020 (before he became an All-Star). He’s turning the ball over around half as often per 100 possessions as he did a season ago. He’s an enormous part of a defense that surprisingly ranks No. 6 in the NBA so far this season. He’s even openly called the 76ers Tyrese Maxey’s team.
And the 76ers are, obviously, winning. They’re mostly winning clutch games, but hey, you expect to win close games with four stars in your starting lineup. They’re going to figure out the finer points of maximizing this talent mix over time, but even the “getting to know each other” version of this group poses almost impossible matchup problems for other teams. Take Cleveland, who has already faced Philadelphia twice. Can you guess which two Cavalier defenders have spent the most partial possessions guarding Brown, per NBA.com tracking data? James Harden and Donovan Mitchell, at 60.6 combined. Those are the sort of defenders you try to hide on weak scorers to preserve for offense. Well, where exactly are Harden and Mitchell supposed to hide against this team? There are no weak spots. The advantage of having this many creators is that Philadelphia basically starts every possession with an exploitable mismatch.
On pure talent accumulation alone, this is the sort of roster teams tend to go all-in for. Philadelphia didn’t even have to. While the Stepien Rule complicates the tradability of some of their remaining picks, the 76ers are still slated to have four first-round picks in the next seven drafts. There is still ammunition for some sort of pivot here, whether that’s a short-term upgrade to maximize this title run or more likely, some sort of long-term change at center as Joel Embiid gets older and potentially less reliable from a health perspective.
There are going to be depth questions down the line. Even if Brown gets less than a 35% max on his eventual extension, he’s going to be pricey. Maxey feels like a near-lock for a supermax extension in the years to come, and while VJ Edgecombe will almost certainly be limited to 25% of the cap on his rookie extension, he’ll still account for quite a bit of money. The 76ers are a top-heavy roster today, and that’s after hitting a few home runs on the margins and getting arguably the greatest player of all time to take the minimum. Sustaining contention beyond the “Embiid is still a matchup nightmare and LeBron is on the team” era is going to require near-perfect management on the margins.
But this isn’t rocket science. How many teams have a trio they can feel better about for, say, the next three-to-five years than Maxey, Brown and Edgecombe? The Brown trade opened an immediate championship window and likely ensured a relatively high baseline for the rest of the decade, assuming acceptable health and wise decisions elsewhere on the roster. It was a great trade in July and it remains a great trade today.