One day shy of two months after the Philadelphia 76ers ended Jaylen Brown’s season, they did what so many pundits had tried and failed to do over the last half-decade. They split up the Jays.
They found one hell of a way of doing it, too: by trading for Brown, in a day that scarcely anybody saw coming amid breathless prognostication over what would constitute an appropriate return for a five-time All-Star, two-time All-NBA selection and NBA Finals Most Valuable Player.
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In the end, it wasn’t Giannis Antetokounmpo, or “four and even five first-round picks.” It was Paul George — 36 years young, two years removed from his last All-Star nod, having played fewer than 60 games in six of the last seven seasons, with a 25-game suspension for violating the terms of the NBA’s anti-drug program this past campaign, and owed $110.7 million over the next two seasons — an unprotected 2031 Sixers first-round pick, a 2028 first whose potential outcome is “kind of complicated,” and second-round picks in 2028 and 2030 that have already been multiply swapped (and could turn out to be pretty good).
Whether that return sounds to you like a lot or a little likely depends on whether you grew up in South Boston or South Philly. (You’re not going to believe this, but Celtics fans and Sixers fans have A LOT OF BIG FEELINGS about this one.) And on what you think of George, who was excellent defensively (when available) in Philly and who showed up in a major way against Boston in the playoffs, but whose contract was largely considered to be such a negative asset that it would require some draft-pick incentivization to get another team to take it on. And on how highly you rate Brown — which, in case you hadn’t heard, is a whole friggin’ thing.
Oh, also, on how optimistic you are that Brown, who turns 30 in October, will produce at an All-NBA level through the balance of the supermax contract extension he signed in 2023, which will pay him $183 million over the next three seasons.
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Speaking of which: Brown is eligible for a two-year, $142 million extension that would push that deal through 2030-31 — which might have something to do with Brad Stevens’ sudden intense interest in moving him. It’s perhaps worth noting that this deal saves the Celtics a few million bucks this season while also swapping one giant deal that runs through 2029 for another that ends a year earlier — putting Boston in position to have virtually no long-term money outside of Jayson Tatum’s contract on the books after 2028. (It’s also perhaps worth noting that, even after having been dangled for Antetokounmpo but not dealt, Brown reportedly never requested a trade from the team that drafted him third overall in 2016 … and was shipped out anyway. It’s a cold world; better pack your own heat.)
Leaping at the opportunity to pay Brown $65 million two years from now is an awfully big first swing from new Sixers head honcho Mike Gansey. (Well, technically, I guess drafting Labaron Philon Jr., bringing back Dominick Barlow, letting Kelly Oubre Jr., Quentin Grimes and Trendon Watford walk, and bringing in Dean Wade and Ariel Hukporti all preceded this swing. So it’s an awfully big, um, eighth swing?) And agreeing to commit more than 94% of Philly’s 2026-27 salary cap to the trio of Brown, Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey feels both extremely steep (and somewhat anachronistic, in an era when having the depth to withstand the rigors of the 82-game marathon has never felt more important).
But the Sixers were already built to be overwhelmingly top-heavy — just with a Big Three that had only managed to be on the court together for a grand total of 36 games over two regular seasons. Bringing in Brown, who has played at least 1,900 minutes in each of the past nine seasons, makes Philadelphia younger — nearly seven years younger than George — more durable, more athletic and more explosive.
It should also make them more adept at pressuring the rim: Only Deni Avdija drove to the basket more frequently than Brown last season, and only two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored more points per game on drives than Brown did. A perimeter trio of Maxey, Brown and rising sophomore VJ Edgecombe feels designed to give opposing head coaches headaches, and to ensure that opposing swingmen require extra treatment the next day. (The prospect of Edgecombe, who was sensational as a rookie and reacted to the Sixers’ second-round sweep at the hands of the eventual champion New York Knicks by vowing to make himself impossible for a defense to leave open, drawing an opponent’s third-best perimeter defender is extremely enticing.)
The 76ers have split up the Jays. (Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
(Maddie Meyer via Getty Images)
It gives the Sixers the most dependable, high-level, two-way big wing they’ve had since Jimmy Butler: a player who isn’t the 3-point marksman that George is, but who otherwise looks like precisely the sort of gap-filling perimeter star the Sixers have been searching for between Maxey and Embiid. Brown has averaged more than 20 points, five rebounds and three assists per game in each of the last six seasons; the last Sixers forward to do that for one season was Chris Webber in 2005. Before him? Charles Barkley and Julius Erving. (It’s been a rocky few decades.)
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It also gives Philly another viable Plan B. Brown just spent the last year proving he’s capable of (pretty) efficiently soaking up a ton of usage and shot attempts in the absence of another signature star — a useful skill set on a team that employs Embiid, whose health and availability are perpetually in question, and that should really try to lighten the workload on Maxey, who led the NBA in minutes per game last season and has played the 10th-most minutes in the league over the past five years. (That sound you just heard was Sixers head coach Nick Nurse, ever a bespectacled Thibs, taking that suggestion, crumpling it up and tossing it unthinkingly over his shoulder into the nearest trash can, all while getting down into a deeeeep squat.)
Brown, of course, doesn’t view himself as a “Plan B.” He sees himself as a bona fide star: a player capable of being the best performer in the NBA Finals, of helping shoulder the burden of a historic franchise for a decade, and of propelling a team ravaged by injuries and salary-cap-slashing defections to 56 wins and the No. 2 seed. And it’s that strong sense of self, combined with what you can only imagine is an incredible amount of anger at the franchise he’d helped shepherd shipping him off for a shorter contract and a couple of picks, that could make Brown an even better pickup for the Sixers: someone intent on proving beyond all doubt to everyone from anonymous analytics staffers to Celtics ownership that he is exactly as big a difference-maker as he believes himself to be, and doing so by teaming with Maxey, Edgecombe and a hopefully-mostly-healthy Embiid to lift Philadelphia past the second round of the playoffs for the first time since 2001.
I’m not sure the Sixers are there yet. As presently constituted, they seem to be depending a lot on Wade, whose 3-point shot has largely disappeared in the playoffs and whose minutes declined throughout the Cleveland Cavaliers’ four-game sweep by New York in the Eastern Conference finals. (Though, from the sound of if, they’re at least kicking the tires on a slightly higher-wattage option at the 4.) A reserve corps of Barlow, Hukporti, Philon, Adem Bona, Jabari Walker and Justin Edwards could probably use some reinforcements; those might be tough to come by, with Philly now hard-capped at the first apron, with only their biannual exception and a slice of their midlevel exception left, according to Derek Bodner of PHLY Sports. And, obviously, as ever, The Embiid Question looms large over the entire enterprise.
And yet: The Sixers entered Wednesday as a play-in team that didn’t seem to have too much of a reason to harbor hopes of being much more than that, and they exit it with what should be an extremely motivated prime-aged All-NBA player who just averaged 29 points per game. Yes, it cost them some draft capital, and yes, that carries with it some risk; there’s a chance that we could look back on Gansey’s from-the-heels uppercut swing in a few years as yet another misbegotten move that doomed yet another era of Sixers basketball. (If nothing else, it’ll have some company.)
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But in Adam Silver’s much-ballyhooed “parity of opportunity” era, where repeat champions are a thing of the past and championship windows only stay open for about 15 minutes (if they ever open at all), it’s reasonable to at least consider that fortune might favor the bold. That, if you’re pretty good and have a chance to get better than that, that if you can crowbar open one of those vanishingly thin windows of contention, you might just be a couple of breaks away from the conference finals — and that, from there, anything can happen.
Nobody saw the Pacers getting to Game 7 until they were there. Nobody saw the Knicks lording over the league until they were hoisting the Larry O’B. Nobody saw Kawhi Leonard going back to Toronto, and nobody saw Philly emerging as the Jaylen Brown team. And yet, here we are — contemplating the possibility that the Raptors and Sixers, not the Celtics and Pistons, could wind up representing the East in 11 months’ time.
Toronto took its shot on Tuesday. Philadelphia responded in kind on Wednesday. We’ll have to wait to find out whether either of them hit the target; that they let it fly, though, could augur a monstrous, unpredictable, and pretty damn exciting season in the Eastern Conference.