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Sports in Boston are ... a big deal. That's not breaking news, of course.
And part of that deal is that the bonds that form between fandoms and athletes are strong. So much so that even when some Boston athletes move to other cities -- whether that be for good, bad, or ugly reasons -- the locals don't always move on. And in some cases, it leads to a rather grand spectacle.
That's relevant this week because Jaylen Brown will be playing as an opponent of the Celtics when his 76ers take the court on Tuesday night in Philadelphia, after Brown spent the first 10 years of his career in Boston.
This particular reunion appears to be of the icy variety, as Brown told reporters Sunday night that he has no plans to talk to longtime former teammate Jayson Tatum, despite Tatum stating publicly that he's reached out to try to talk to Brown since the trade went down this summer.
Tatum's done his part to downplay the dramatics of this matchup, saying, "In the words of Brad Stevens, they all count as one."
This one, though, clearly will have a lot of juice and draw quite a bit of attention. It may not quite be the same as when Brown actually returns to Boston in January, but it's still a regular-season game that qualifies as having "event" status in early November.
And it won't be the first such case, as a whole parade of great Boston athletes have moved on before facing off against their former teams.
The grandaddy of them all, Roger Clemens' return to Boston as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays was one for the ages. After then-GM Dan Duquette had declared Clemens to have been in the "twilight of his career," The Rocket took things personally.
Clemens ascended the Fenway mound in the bottom of the first inning and promptly loaded the bases on back-to-back singles by Nomar Garciaparra and John Valentin and a hit-by-pitch on former teammate Mo Vaughn. He even spotted Boston a run on a Reggie Jefferson groundout to first, but recorded two strikeouts to get out of the inning without further damage.
From there, Clemens was dominant: Eight innings, four hits, just the one run with 16 strikeouts and no walks.
By the end of his outing, he had the Fenway crowd roaring for him as he struck out Vaughn to end the eighth inning.
Clemens, as we know, was decidedly not in the twilight of his career, as he went on to win 162 more games, strike out 2,082 more batters, and win four more Cy Young Awards and a pair of World Series trophies over 11 years after leaving Boston.
Nobody knows when fans started wearing jerseys to games, and nobody can pinpoint the genesis of the split jersey. But Ray Bourque's return to Boston as a member of the Colorado Avalanche might have been the day that concept came to life.
Bourque's departure from Boston was as amicable as possible, as the Bruins sent him to Colorado to give him a chance to win a Stanley Cup at age 39. The Avalanche came up short after that trade in 2000, but Bourque returned to the Avs for the 2000-01 season. Doing so meant he'd play against the Bruins for the first time after spending the previous two decades on the blue line for Boston.
Bourque's first game as a Bruins opponent came in February of 2001, and he helped the Avalanche pull away with a pair of second-period assists in what ended up being an 8-2 Colorado win.
A month later, Bourque played his first game as a visitor in Boston, once again registering two assists in an Avalanche victory. Bourque was named the game's No. 1 star and was given an ovation by the Boston crowd.
Three months later, Bourque returned to Boston with the Stanley Cup in tow for a rally at City Hall Plaza. The four major teams in Boston hadn't won a championship in 15 years at the time, so that celebration -- for a player, not the team -- represented the epitome of pre-2000s Boston sports.
The Boston Red Sox, quite famously, did not win a World Series for 86 years. It was a well-covered story. Some people wrote books on the matter.
But the fortunes of the franchise began to change in the late '90s, when the Red Sox acquired Pedro Martinez at the peak of his powers. Pedro only spent seven seasons in Boston, but it was a stretch that included some of the best pitching in history. From 1998-2003, Martinez went 101-28 with a 2.26 ERA and a 0.942 WHIP while striking out 1,456 batters with 248 walks.
He wasn't the same dominant pitcher in 2004, but he helped the Red Sox break that curse and win the World Series. And then, once the confetti was cleared off the streets of Boston, Pedro was ... a New York Met.
Martinez didn't face the Red Sox in 2005 but made his return to Fenway in June of 2006. What followed was one of Martinez's worst starts of the year, as he allowed eight runs (six earned) and struck out just one batter while lasting three innings.
Still considered one of the worst trades in Boston sports history, the Bruins hastily traded captain Joe Thornton to San Jose, receiving Marco Sturm, Brad Stuart and Wayne Primeau in return.
It didn't take long before Thornton returned to Boston, as the Sharks visited the Bruins just six weeks after the trade. Despite the Bruins' losing record, it was a tough ticket to get into the Garden that night for the return of Jumbo Joe.
Fans who shelled out money to be there, though, were left stunned just five minutes into the game, when Thornton was given a game misconduct for hitting Hal Gill from behind. Thornton had just 2:31 of ice time before getting the gate, but the Sharks still went on to win, 6-2.
Despite being a kicker, Adam Vinatieri was a Boston sports icon. Drilling a pair of kicks in a blizzard before sending a picture-perfect kick through the uprights two weeks later to win the first Super Bowl in Patriots franchise history will have that effect. Kicking another Super Bowl-winner two years later and scoring the winning points on a field goal in a third Super Bowl in 2004 only worked to reinforce that status.
Yet after the 2005 season, Bill Belichick's desire to no longer pay Vinatieri coincided with Indianapolis going through their own kicker struggles with Mike Vanderjagt, leading to Vinatieri making the move to the rival Colts.
Vinatieri returned to Gillette in prime time in his first season with the Colts, a Week 8 Sunday Night Football matchup. Patriots fans greeted Vinatieri with boos, and the kicker uncharacteristically missed two field goals. But Tom Brady was even more off his game, finishing the night with no touchdowns and four interceptions, allowing the Colts to win at Gillette for a second consecutive year.
Vinatieri would then go on to help Peyton Manning and the Colts get over the hump and win the Super Bowl later that season.
If fans felt hurt by Adam Vinatieri joining the Colts, then they felt downright betrayed by Johnny Damon jumping ship and joining the Yankees.
Coming off an All-Star season with the Red Sox in 2005, Damon signed a four-year, $52 million deal with the Yankees. Just a month into his Yankees tenure, Damon made his return to Fenway Park. And though the reaction when Damon dug in to lead off the game was primarily negative -- fans would later dump fake money onto the warning track when Damon trotted out to play center field -- Damon made the decision to remove his helmet and salute the crowd.
"I heard a lot more cheers than jeers. Regardless, I wanted to do it because these fans meant so much to me," Damon explained.
Damon went 0-for-4 on a night where his return was overshadowed by the acquisition of and subsequent police escort for Doug Mirabelli, who arrived at Fenway in dramatic fashion to catch Tim Wakefield.
While the Joe Thornton trade held the crown for 15 years as the worst in Boston sports since Babe Ruth, the Red Sox recaptured that ignominious title when they forced new chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom trade Mookie Betts in 2020.
The return for a homegrown, generational talent was underwhelming to say the least, and the reality of that situation had fully set in by the time Betts finally played a game against his former team in 2023. He walked in the seventh and came around to score what proved to be the winning run in a 7-4 Dodgers victory.
In retrospect, Bill Belichick's decision to essentially swap out Lawyer Milloy for Rodney Harrison in the summer of 2003 was clearly the right one. At the time, though, Belichick's decision to cut the veteran safety just before the season started was certainly one of the most controversial moves of his tenure.
And while it paid off in the long run, it immediately backfired, as Milloy signed with the Bills and helped Buffalo put a beatdown on the Patriots in Week 1. Milloy recorded a sack, a tackle for a loss and a pass defense as the Bills rolled the Patriots 31-0. That game spawned this now-famous television moment:
But things turned out just fine for the Patriots, who won 34 of their next 36 games, including two Super Bowls.
Lawyer Milloy's teammate in Buffalo was quarterback Drew Bledsoe, who made his own debut as a Patriots opponent the year prior in 2002.
Bledsoe lost to the Patriots 38-7 in that game, throwing for 302 yards with one touchdown and one interception while taking four sacks. His second crack at the Patriots -- and his first game at Gillette Stadium -- didn't go much better, as his Bills lost 27-17. Bledsoe threw for 328 yards and two touchdowns … but also four interceptions in that game.
Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett own the rare distinction of helping the Celtics during their time in Boston and through their departures, as Danny Ainge was able to acquire the picks that would turn into Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum from a Nets team that was desperate to gain relevance.
Pierce's first game against the Celtics was quiet, as he was playing in his first game back after missing four games due to a broken finger. He went 0-for-4 from the field in just his fourth-ever game coming off the bench. Garnett had 11 points and nine assists as the Nets beat the Celtics in Brooklyn.
While on the subject of 2008 champs who moved on, Rajon Rondo was traded during the 2014-15 season. Just weeks later, he faced off against the C's and put on a rare shooting display for the Mavericks.
Rondo, who was averaging less than one 3-point attempt per game through the first nine-plus seasons of his career at that point, went 5-for-7 from deep and 12-for-19 from the field for a 29-point night (along with six rebounds and five assists) on the Garden parquet.
Following the second-lost captaincy in Bruins history with Zdeno Chara, the Bruins had a couple of relatively quick runs with Patrice Bergeron (three seasons before retiring) and Brad Marchand (a little over a season and a half before being traded to the Florida Panthers).
It worked out great for Marchand and the Panthers, who went on to win the Stanley Cup in 2025.
Though Marchand hadn't been gone for long, his return to TD Garden was an emotional one, as he fought through tears while a tribute video played on the scoreboard.
Marchand picked up an assist just 61 seconds into the game and added another one in the third period of a 4-3 Panthers win.
To say Kevin Garnett was upset when Ray Allen left the Celtics to join the rival Heat would be an understatement. It took Garnett about a decade to finally welcome Allen back into his life.
So when the Heat and Celtics squared off on opening night, Garnett wasn't exactly up for catching up with his former teammate.
Allen scored 19 points off the bench that night while LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh combined for 74 points in a 120-107 Heat win.
Losing Bill Parcells after the 1996 season was bad for New England. Losing Curtis Martin to the Jets a year later was arguably worse.
The steal of the 1995 draft, Martin played just three seasons in New England, rushing for 3,799 yards and 32 touchdowns with 117 receptions for 890 yards and five more TDs. But he left as a restricted free agent to reunite with Parcells in New York. In Week 7, he'd begin what would end up being a Hall of Fame career of reminding the Patriots of what they lost.
Martin ran for 107 yards in a 24-14 win at Foxboro Stadium on Monday Night Football. He went over 100 yards in the regular-season finale vs. the Patriots, too.
That would become a bit of a habit, as Martin averaged 104.1 yards per game in his first eight games against New England.
The deadline day trade of Manny Ramirez in 2008 caught many people by surprise, but by the time Ramirez returned as a visitor in 2010, the shock had surely worn off.
Ramirez's return to Fenway wasn't notable for what he did -- he went 1-for-5 with a pair of strikeouts -- but for what his former running mate David Ortiz did.
Ortiz launched a two-run homer in the bottom of the first inning, which moved him into a tie for fifth-most in Red Sox history, appropriately tying him with … Ramirez.
Ortiz was well on his way to finishing at No. 2 on that list, behind only Ted Williams.
The Patriots undoubtedly got the best years out of Wes Welker, but he still had plenty of gas left in the tank for his first year in Denver with Peyton Manning. Bill Belichick was able to limit Welker when the Broncos visited Gillette for a Sunday Night Football matchup in Week 12 of 2013, holding him to just four catches for 31 yards. (He had been averaging six receptions and just under 65 yards per game.)
Welker made a game-changing gaffe in the game, too, when the Patriots punted with 3:11 left in overtime. Welker backed away from the landing spot but was late to signal that to his teammates, leading to Tony Carter running directly into the ball. The Patriots recovered and kicked the game-winning kick shortly thereafter.
That night, the Patriots also climbed out of a 24-0 halftime hole to force overtime, where Belichick won the coin toss and took the wind. That decision paid off, as Manning could not throw into the biting wind, and the Patriots eventually won the game.
The fifth overall pick in the 2006 draft, Phil Kessel was tabbed to be the next great goal scorer for the Bruins. Instead, he was traded after just three seasons, netting Boston the picks that landed Tyler Seguin and Dougie Hamilton.
Kessel returned to Boston with the Maple Leafs in December of 2009, and the Bruins blew them out. Boston had a 7-0 lead before Toronto finally scored in the final five minutes of the game. Kessel, who was booed every time he touched the puck, was a minus-3 on the night.
Of the more recent vintage, Rafael Devers faced the Red Sox just five days after he was shockingly traded to the Giants.
Devers went 0-for-5. He did homer the next day, and he also homered when he returned to Fenway Park more than a year later:
RAFI HOMERS IN HIS RETURN TO FENWAY 🔥 pic.twitter.com/j49EOMR52Q
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) August 22, 2026
Of course, the biggest one we'll ever see, Tom Brady visited Foxboro as a Tampa Bay Buccaneer to take on Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots in October of 2021. Ticket prices were astronomical, and the game had a Super Bowl-type of feel around it for the weeks leading up to kickoff.
Brady was -- as you'd hope -- greeted with a roar from the fans who cheered for him for 20 years when he first jogged across the field. Yet when he took the field on offense, those fans let him know where their allegiances lay when they rained boos down upon the GOAT.
Tom Brady comes out for the first series and..well...
— Sunday Night Football on NBC (@SNFonNBC) October 4, 2021
Just listen to the reception. #TheReturn | @NBC | @PeacockTV pic.twitter.com/YRbzGnpQ76
Brady didn't play great, completing just over half of his 43 passes for 269 yards with no touchdowns or picks, but the Bucs squeaked out a win when Nick Folk's 56-yard field goal clanked off the upright.
Brady and Belichick -- despite their rough ending -- shared a long conversation in the Bucs' locker room after the game, closing the book on the most fascinating and successful story in NFL history.
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