All-Star wing Jayson Tatum is ready to embrace his new Boston Celtics teammates entering the new season, but still feels it’s “weird” that Jaylen Brown — his running mate of nine years — won’t be on the team anymore.
“If I’m being transparent, it’s weird,” Tatum told ESPN on Wednesday.
“I’ve been on the Celtics for nine years and he was my teammate every single one of those,” Tatum said of Brown, whom he won a championship wtih in 2024.
Tatum said he has come to understand that the “NBA is a business” and front offices are forced to take tough, albeit unpopular calls, to steer the franchise in the right direction.
Jayson Tatum describes how it feels to see Jaylen Brown leave the Celtics.
Jayson Tatum Excited About New Era
The Celtics franchise star admitted that it’s hard to strike the balance of being excited about his new teammates — Paul George, Mitchell Robinson and Mike Conley — while also feeling sadness about Brown’s departure. The six-time All-Star feels the Celtics fanbase is likely enduring a similar dilemma.
“There’s still a human element of it that you feel those emotions. The city feels those emotions,” Tatum said of trying to move on from the Jaylen Brown trade.
“But there’s also a side of like, ‘we have to welcome our new teammates in with open arms, and we still have to attack the new season,'” he continued.
“So, there’s like a balance. But it’s weird.”
But Why the Sixers?
In the aftermath of the Jaylen Brown trade, Celtics fans were particularly upset that the All-NBA wing was dealt to an Atlantic Division rival in the Philadelphia 76ers. The trade was all the more perplexing since the C’s blew a 3-1 series lead to the Sixers in last season’s playoffs. Tatum was asked if it’s “weird” to see Brown join such a critical rival.
“Y’all got us one time,” Tatum told Kevin Negandhi, an ardent Sixers fan, while reminding the ESPN host of Boston’s dominant record over Philadelphia.
Interestingly, Celtics front-office boss Brad Stevens also conceded that trading Brown to a division rival was not ideal.
“If I was being honest, if that exact deal came from a team out West and you were comparing the two, then you’d probably take the team out West, but that’s not the way it worked,” Stevens said after moving Brown to Philadelphia.
Stevens justified the controversial trade by suggesting that the pairing of Brown and Tatum was no longer feasible in the reality of the new CBA.
“When I looked at our team, and I looked at where the league was heading, looked at the way that we’ve finished the last couple years, and also looked at the unbelievable way we’ve played in the regular season in the last couple years… the path looked a little bit more challenging to me,” Stevens said.
“I might be wrong, I’m not going to stand up here and be defensive about that, but the path looked a little bit more challenging with 70% of our cap and such a high percent of our usage tied into two players,” he added.
Celtics’ Jayson Tatum Breaks Silence on ‘Weird’ Jaylen Brown Trade