Jaylen Brown and Paul George are reportedly trading places for the upcoming season.
Trade activity continues to provide more drama than free agency in the early days of the offseason. And the latest drama came from the two franchises that have faced each other most often in NBA history.
A Jaylen Brown trade had seemed inevitable, and it went down on Wednesday, when the Boston Celtics reportedly dealt Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers in exchange for Paul George, two first-round picks and two second-round picks.
For the Celtics, it’s the end of an era. Over Brown’s 10 years in Boston, they led the league in both regular-season wins (530) and playoff wins (86), winning an NBA championship in 2024. And despite Jayson Tatum missing the first 62 games this past season, they ranked in the top five on both ends of the floor for an *unprecedented fourth straight season.
* Since the league started counting turnovers in 1977.
For the Sixers, it’s both an upgrade at the all-important 3/4 spot and an opportunity to get younger, with Brown more than six years younger than George. It also gives them more day-to-day certainty about who’s going to be in the lineup, with Brown (337) having played almost 100 more regular-season games than George (239) over the last five years.
More offseason analysis: Antetokounmpo numbers | Early deal takeaways | Ball to Minnesota | Leonard to Toronto
Here some notes and numbers regarding Brown and George, as well as the remade Sixers and Celtics …
1. Can Brown take the Sixers past the conference semis?
The Sixers upset the Celtics in the first round of the 2026 playoffs, only to be swept by the New York Knicks in the conference semifinals, where six of their last nine seasons have ended.
Over those nine years (since the 2017-18 season), 19 of the league’s 30 franchises have reached the conference finals at least once. The Sixers are not one of those 19 franchises, even though they’ve had the league’s fifth best regular season record over that stretch.
Best regular season records, 2017-18 through 2025-26
| Team | W | L | PCT | Conf. finals | Champ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boston | 477 | 241 | .664 | 5 | 1 |
| Denver | 455 | 264 | .633 | 2 | 1 |
| Milwaukee | 444 | 275 | .618 | 2 | 1 |
| Oklahoma City | 416 | 302 | .579 | 2 | 1 |
| Philadelphia | 416 | 303 | .579 | 0 | 0 |
| LA Clippers | 415 | 303 | .578 | 1 | 0 |
| Golden State | 398 | 314 | .559 | 3 | 2 |
| L.A. Lakers | 392 | 325 | .547 | 2 | 1 |
| Miami | 390 | 329 | .542 | 3 | 0 |
| Toronto | 387 | 331 | .539 | 1 | 1 |
Brown and the Celtics reached the conference finals six times in his 10 seasons. He’s seen minimal drop-off in his career numbers from the regular season (20.0 points per game on a true shooting percentage of 57.1%) to the playoffs (19.6 on 57.4%), and he was both the Eastern Conference finals and Finals MVP two years ago.
Brown has played in 15 more playoff games than any other player over the last 10 years, and he’s played big in some of the biggest ones. The Sixers will still need Joel Embiid to be healthy in April and May, but they’re now in better position to get over that hump.
2. Will Sixers get better shots?
The Sixers have been a worse-than-average offensive team in each of the last two seasons, and they scored just 106.3 points per 100 possessions as they were swept in the conference semis by the Knicks.
Brown is obviously an offensive upgrade. He’s been the more efficient scorer than George in each of the last two seasons, even though he’s carried a bigger offensive load.
He takes tough shots. Among 182 players with at least 500 total field-goal attempts this past season, Brown had the 26th lowest shot quality, according to tracking data. He was one of seven players who attempted at least 10 pull-up jumpers per game.
But the Sixers took tougher shots, ranking 29th in shot quality, only ahead of the Dallas Mavericks, who had a bottom-five offense overall. Philly ranked 26th in effective field goal percentage, with Joel Embiid (12th lowest), Tyrese Maxey (15th lowest) and George (18th lowest) all having lower shot-quality marks than Brown.
The talent upgrade should lead to better shots … if Maxey, Brown and Embiid don’t settle for tough ones (something they’ve all done to varying degrees) and share the ball.
3. Celtics still lacking pressure on the rim
In each of the last three seasons, the Celtics have ranked last in the percentage of their shots (41% this past season) that have come in the paint.
The first of those seasons was, of course, the year they won the championship. But they’ve also ranked last in free throw rate each of the last two years, and both times, their postseason ended early with not enough shots near the basket.
Lowest % of shots coming in the paint, playoff series, last 4 years
| Team | Year | Round | Opp. | FGA | PFGA | %Paint |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boston | 2026 | First round | PHI | 615 | 221 | 36% |
| Boston | 2025 | Conf. semis | NYK | 523 | 196 | 37% |
| Miami | 2025 | First round | CLE | 326 | 129 | 40% |
| Phoenix | 2026 | First round | OKC | 345 | 138 | 40% |
| Golden State | 2025 | First round | HOU | 607 | 243 | 40% |
PFGA = Field goal attempts in the paint
%Paint = Percentage of total field goal attempts that came in the paint
Swapping Brown for George does not help the Celtics get to the basket or the free throw line more often. Brown took a much higher percentage of his shots in the paint and had a much higher free throw rate than George this past season.
Jaylen Brown vs. Paul George, paint shooting and free throw rate, 2025-26
| Player | PFGM | PFGA | PFG% | %Paint | Rank | FTA/FGA | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brown | 444 | 772 | 57.5% | 50% | 80 | .347 | 38 |
| George | 69 | 136 | 50.7% | 27% | 166 | .216 | 123 |
PFGM, PFGA, PFG% = Field goals made, field goals attempted and field goal percentage in the paint
%Paint = Percentage of total field goal attempts that came in the paint
Rank = Among 182 players with at least 500 total FGA
The addition of Mitchell Robinson will help the Celtics put a little more pressure on the rim and dominate the offensive glass. But if he helps their free throw rate, he’ll hurt their free throw percentage.
And this trade, in itself, doesn’t give their offense any more balance. George is very much a jump-shooter, and he’s much more of an off-ball jump-shooter than Brown has been. Without Brown, the Celtics may need to add some more ball and player movement to their offense, having ranked in the bottom five in both this past season.
4. An upgrade defensively?
George may have made an impression on the Celtics in that first round series in April. On offense, he averaged 17.4 points, shooting 22-for-40 (55%) from 3-point range. And on defense, he competently defended both Brown and Jayson Tatum.
At his peak, George was one of the best defenders in the league. And in that series vs. the Celtics, he may have benefited from the rest that came with his 25-game suspension near the end of the regular season. At the age of 36, he probably can’t play that level of defense for 6-9 months. But he’ll have Robinson and Derrick White on the floor with him, and still might be an upgrade on Brown on that end of the floor.
One reason an “analytics” person might be critical of Brown is that the Celtics were better with him off the floor than they were with him on the floor in each of the last four seasons. And while he could be more efficient offensively, that on-off discrepancy has mostly been about defense, where Boston allowed 5.2 more points per 100 possessions with him on the floor (111.9) than it did with him off the floor (106.7) over those four years.
That certainly doesn’t mean that the Celtics won’t miss him. But they certainly didn’t lose him for nothing, and the picks they got in the trade may help them acquire another All-NBA player at some point in the future.
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John Schuhmann has covered the NBA for more than 20 years. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Bluesky.
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