In an unexpected move, Boston traded the All-Star guard to division rivals Philadelphia for Paul George and draft picks.

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Jaylen Brown’s time in Boston has come to a surprising end with the Celtics deciding to trade him to one of their most storied rivals.

Brown – the 2024 NBA Finals MVP, a five-time All-Star and the league’s fourth-leading scorer this past season – is getting traded by the Celtics to the Philadelphia 76ers, a person with knowledge of the deal’s terms said on Wednesday night.

Boston is getting Paul George, along with a slew of draft capital that could become two first-round picks and two second-round picks, said the person who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the trade does not yet have the required league approvals.

ESPN first reported the trade agreement, and the terms were later confirmed by The Boston Globe.

Add this news to the list of blockbuster moves across the NBA so far this off season.

LeBron James is leaving the Los Angeles Lakers as a free agent. All-Star-calibre players Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kawhi Leonard and Brandon Ingram are also on the move.

Now, this.

“Welcome to Philly, JB!” Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro posted on social media. “Sixers get way better and, as a bonus, the Celtics got worse!”

It’s a move that breaks up what has been one of the league’s most successful 1-2 punches in Brown and Jayson Tatum, who helped carry the Celtics to the 2024 NBA title.

Tatum missed most of this past season while recovering from an Achilles tear that happened during the 2025 playoffs, meaning Brown had to carry even more of the load for Boston – and he wound up with career-best averages of 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds and 5.1 assists per game.

It seemed, though, that Brown had felt underappreciated, especially after it became known that Boston had included him in trade talks with Milwaukee when Antetokounmpo was on the market.

“Nobody has won more combined regular-season and playoff games since I entered the league 10 years ago,” Brown posted on social media over the weekend. He’s right: The Celtics have won 523 games with Brown in the lineup, including playoff contests, which is six more than Denver has won with Nikola Jokic over that span.

Brown now gets to be part of a squad in Philadelphia alongside guard Tyrese Maxey and centre Joel Embiid, someone who Brown recently called a flopper on a livestream.

“Joel Embiid is a great player. One of the best bigs in f****** basketball history flops,” Brown said. “He know it. This ain’t breaking news.”

Brown, Maxey (the league’s fifth top scorer this past season) and Embiid (a two-time NBA scoring champion) could become a positively frightening trio in Philadelphia, and the Celtics deciding to play a role in creating such a triumvirate only adds to the intrigue surrounding why they wanted to trade Brown in the first place.

The trade ends a tremendously disappointing two-year stint for George, who was traded with two years left on a four-year, $212m free-agent contract. The 36-year-old never approached his nine-time All-Star form in Philadelphia, and his tenure was marred by a 25-game suspension last season for flunking a drug test.

He averaged just 16.7 points in his two seasons in Philadelphia after topping the 20-point mark in nine straight seasons with Indiana, Oklahoma City and the Los Angeles Clippers.