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The Sixers have spent most of the last decade playing and mostly losing against Jaylen Brown and the Boston Celtics, finally breaking through in a dramatic 3-1 comeback this season. In the wake of that series defeat, a botched attempt to trade for Giannis Antetokounmpo, and several eyebrow-raising streams on Twitch, Brown was traded to the Sixers in exchange for Paul George, two first-round picks, and two second-round picks.
Here are the trade details:
Without wasting too much time on the picks involved — especially because we need clarity on what exactly that 2028 first situation looks like — this appears to be a completely reasonable outlay for a prime-aged star in exchange for a still effective but clearly declining George. Brown’s ranking in the public may overstate his actual impact (and more on that later), but this trade didn’t actually leverage that fact. George was pretty excellent when he was actually on the floor last season, but staying on the floor is indeed a big problem for him, and doesn’t figure to change in the years ahead.
So what does change in the years ahead?
Brown’s fit with the current roster
This is a wholly different player than the departing George, a sledgehammer player who is going to spend most of his time operating inside the arc. George was a player whose value could come from doing a lot of his work off-ball, which is decidedly not the case for Brown. That sets up for a fascinating process in the year(s) ahead as the Sixers try to figure out how to maximize this group and take advantage of all their talents.
Brown is certainly a different player now than he was when he entered the league as an elite tools bet who had shown slashing potential at Cal. He has become a more prolific and more effective in-between scorer as the years have gone by, trading some of his shots at the rim for shots from around 8-16 feet out, remaining a very good finisher at the basket when he gets there as either a driver or cutter. What he has not been, outside of a couple of very good years earlier in his career, is an effective outside shooter. To say the least, taking a hovering-around-average shooter and plopping him into George’s offensive role would be a waste of the available resources. This move requires a rethink of everyone’s roles on offense.
The Sixers have made it known through Mike Gansey and Nick Nurse’s comments that they’d like to get Tyrese Maxey off the ball more, and this certainly helps that effort. Brown is not a particularly creative playmaker and benefited from the Celtics’ spread-and-shoot approach to offense, but using Brown to initiate offense will give Maxey opportunities to run through off-ball actions or even just play a stationary swing target at times. Ball screens involving Brown and Maxey will present some golden opportunities to key in on favorable matchups, with Brown able to put guards in the mixer on switches. And Brown is a downhill threat eons beyond what George could offer deep in his 30s, a player who is fast and strong enough to blow past coverage even when it’s positioned perfectly to stop a first step to his favored right hand.
Things get a bit more complicated with Joel Embiid in the mix, mostly due to fights for floor space. Embiid is a massive midrange weapon, but he will demand the ball in areas where Brown likes to spend a lot of his time, and he has rarely looked comfortable as the sort of high-volume, quick-release spacer from three that some believed he could eventually be. So one or both men will have to step outside their comfort zones and trade a few of their favored shots for spot-up opportunities to open the floor for their co-stars.
(Will the Sixers use any empty side pick-and-roll with Brown and Embiid? Brown has worked on his left but is still a hugely one-handed player, so teams would likely ICE every one of those actions to send him toward the baseline and his left hand. Still, that could open some four-on-three windows for Embiid underneath, which is not where most teams will want to live.)
Not to turn into the “availability is the best ability” guy, but one of the main changes with this move is the expectation that Philadelphia’s third star can be a high-usage, high-minute player. George spent much of the last two years protected in ways similar to Embiid, rarely playing back-to-backs and with his minutes managed carefully upon return from injuries.
Defensively, Brown is a very useful and at times impactful defender, where a lot of his value comes from taking on point-of-attack and other on-ball assignments. Part of his Finals MVP case during Boston’s title year came down to his ability to slow an oversized ballhandler in Luka Doncic, unsettling Dallas’ offensive engine to help the Celtics pull away for a championship. But there are cracks in his approach off-ball, where he can have lapses as a help defender at inopportune times.
I would rather Dean Wade live up to the expectation of defending the other team’s best player when he’s on the floor, saving Brown and VJ Edgecombe for less taxing matchups that allow them to impact the game on offense. But Brown’s tools give him a higher ceiling to reach in the playoffs and different matchups, giving Nurse a card to play when they really need it.
A lot will be made about Brown’s public comments calling Embiid a flopper after the first-round loss from this spring, but I tend to think the incentives for the main co-stars far outweigh any potential bad blood or selfishness that could weigh them down. Embiid is desperate to win at the highest levels in the playoffs, Maxey is a flexible and powerful leader running the show, and Brown is going to carry an enormous chip on his shoulder after being traded to a hated division rival by the team that drafted him. And besides, I don’t mind if there’s even some friction between the parties about how things work on offense. The Sixers could use some healthy discomfort to try to shake out of the Eastern Conference’s midpack, and I suspect Brown will challenge his new teammates in ways expected and unexpected.
All told, I think this new group of stars needs supplemental playmaking and isn’t the cleanest fit together on paper. But I think their ability to put pressure on the rim, generate free throws, and attack teams from different angles is compelling enough to do this deal. And I think Brown is the sort of player that can become even more valuable in playoff settings, where his physical toughness and scoring durability are not small details.
What could go wrong?
Make no mistake — Brown’s contract is enormous and part of the reason that the Sixers were able to get him at the price they did. He will make $3 million more than George this season, and has two more years on the deal with no options, closing out the contract making $65 million in the 2028-29 season. The moment Brown signed that contract in Boston, people around the league began to speculate about how tough it would be to move him and whether it boxed Boston into a static Brown/Tatum core even if they eventually lost steam as a duo. I would posit that the contract is a huge part of why Brown is here and for this price, as teams around the league appeared wary of taking it on.
Something we’ll have to unpack over time is the stats argument that has persisted against Brown over the years. By the numbers, Boston often played dramatically better with Brown on the bench, which is part of what drove a “stat nerds” vs. “eye test” argument last week that Brown himself participated in.
I am a believer in math, certainly, but I skew far more toward Brown’s side of the argument in his case. We could debate the impact of an elite system and great supporting talent, parse through lineups and opponent lineup strength, and try to figure out the particulars of why the Celtics have been able to perform so well without a player who appears so valuable through traditional stat measures. But at the end of the day, he has spent a long time in the league, leaving an all-around imprint on the game in a high-volume role on an elite team. The body of work is tremendously impressive, and he remains in the prime of his career.
Maybe you could argue that one bad injury for Brown could be more devastating than it would be for another star, given how central his tools are to his game and success. I think that would be a more compelling argument if the Sixers hadn’t traded a frequently-ailing star on the tail end of his career for Brown, though I’d concede that they’re still a three-max team susceptible to one major injury bringing the whole house down.
The other thing about the potential downside is that it currently sets the Sixers up to have two massive expiring contracts in the summer of 2029, when Brown and Embiid’s current contracts would come off the books simultaneously. You make a deal like this hoping to keep Brown around after this deal ends, I imagine, but if the next couple of years go disastrously, you could set yourself up for a pivot into a completely different team as the clock runs out on those deals. It’s also the summer Maxey’s current deal is up, though I suspect that’s less relevant in the disaster scenario.
What comes next?
The fun part about acquiring a different sort of star for a big three (and don’t forget about VJ!) is that it changes the needs of the new-look roster. At this point, I would argue the Sixers’ focus should turn to shooters of any type, particularly if you can get any with size to play alongside Brown and the guards in different lineups. Brown is a good rebounder for a wing, so I have slightly fewer concerns about Philadelphia’s constant problems on that front.
There are some big names out there on the shooting market, ranging from guys like Gary Trent to a starrier name like Bradley Beal. I have never been a Beal booster and would probably be looking for the cheapest two-way wing who I’d trust to fill a Wade-esque “fifth guy” role as a spot-up option. Josh Okogie fits the bill for me, or maybe you’d take a punt on an underperforming young player like Jett Howard if you think you can win a dice roll.
The fever dream scenario is somehow finding a way to convince LeBron James, evidently setting up his retirement tour, to take a hilariously small contract and finish out his career in Philadelphia. I have been told Philadelphia has indeed expressed interest in the fading legend, and Gansey’s own brother shared a relevant photo in the wake of the Brown trade on Wednesday night:
James isn’t the off-ball sniper they need, but boy, would the Sixers benefit from adding his combination of size, IQ, rebounding, passing, scoring, and…okay, almost everything but the 41-year-old’s current defensive ability and attentiveness. There will be people who tell you they wouldn’t want to deal with the LeBron circus, the passive aggressiveness, the age-related risks, and his ability to overshadow everyone and anything, whether they win or not. But if you are telling me you would rather sign the likes of Marvin Bagley, Gary Trent, washed Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (legal name) after he’s bought out, or some other minimum guy over adding one of the greatest American athletes in history, I think you are a liar or deluded in a concerning way.
I suspect it will be a moot point, as I think LeBron will probably either link up with Steph Curry for an NBA Expendables run the likes of which we’ve never seen, or he’ll play the romantic and head home to Cleveland, ending things where it all started. I’m not sure you could convince LeBron of the upside here or, maybe more pertinently, how it plays in his case to be remembered as the all-time great. Winning here would be a historic feat and help his case, sure, but otherwise it would be a weird coda for his story that I think he has spent two decades obsessing over.
But man, just imagine if it did happen. An offseason that looked destined for a “run it back” type scenario would suddenly turn into one of the craziest summers in Philadelphia sports history. Stay tuned.
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