On Tuesday night, the “Jays” will finally face off.

In perhaps the most anticipated matchup of the season so far, Jaylen Brown and the East-leading 76ers will host Jayson Tatum’s Celtics. It’s the first time the two former teammates and superstars will face off against one another. There’s no beef between them after many successful years in Boston culminating in a championship banner... but there might be lamb chops and gravy.

Their budding rivalry has taken center stage through the first three weeks of the 2026–27 campaign and will continue to do so until the ball goes up at Xfinity Mobile Arena at 7 p.m. ET tonight. But it should not be forgotten how they got here in the first place.

The trade that sent Brown to Philadelphia in exchange for Paul George and two first-round picks was a stunner like few trades that have ever hit the wire. Boston was widely panned for the move at the time, and it played a role in LeBron James agreeing to sign in the City of Brotherly Love. From an on-court perspective, the layers were fascinating and nearly endless.

Now that we’re roughly 10 games into the new season, it’s becoming clear the trade is working out really well for both the Celtics and Sixers.

Jaylen Brown has been huge for the 76ers with room to get better

Brown’s talent is undeniable, but specifics around his on-court fit with Tyrese Maxey, Joel Embiid and James were littered with question marks given what the former Celtics star can do best. Brown has developed into a tremendous isolation scorer who loves to dribble the air out of the ball when he has a favorable matchup, get to his spot and rise up for a tough shot. He supplemented those difficult points with easy ones in transition and plenty of fouls drawn, but the bulk of his scoring came in one-on-one situations.

It worked extremely well last season in Boston, so none of that should be considered criticism. Yet it was at odds with what this Philadelphia roster needed. Maxey is a better three-level scorer and Embiid is a more automatic mismatch machine. The Sixers couldn’t afford to have the 2025–26 version of Brown show up for work, because that Brown wasn’t a good fit next to those two stars. They needed a player more like the version of Brown who won Finals MVP in 2024—the secondary playmaker who prided himself on defense while more carefully choosing his spots offensively as the No. 2 or even No. 3 option on a given night.

Coming off an All-NBA season as the top dog on an elite team, would Brown be willing to do what the team needed instead of what he did best? This was the question many asked. Not because Brown indicated he would refuse. But because it is much harder to play a supporting role after experiencing life as the star of the show.

Brown, it turns out, was more than willing to do what was necessary. He’s been huge for the 76ers.

The 30-year-old wing’s counting stats are down year-over-year; he’s back to 22.3 points per game (much closer to his career average) compared to the 28.7 that led the Celtics to 56 wins last season. But his three-ball has returned after several years away (Brown is hitting 39.2% of his tries from deep after five years of sub-36% three-point shooting). Philly’s defensive rating is nearly 10 points better per 100 possessions with Brown on the court, per PBP Stats, which reflects a renewed consistency on that end of the court after he spent much of last season conserving energy for only the biggest of matchups. He leads the Sixers in transition opportunities per game and is shooting 50% from the floor in 17 clutch minutes. Instead of playing like a talented but inflexible scorer (a right he could have felt like he earned after a great season), Brown is finding ways to make his mark without forcing the issue. The 76ers have gone 9-2 with the star wing’s contributions playing a big role in their spot atop the conference.

The front office gave up valuable draft picks and an established longtime superstar in George because they believed Brown was the two-way wing every team needs to compete for a title. So far the former Boston star is living up to those expectations and his presence was a large part of why LeBron is in Philly. Everything has gone right since the trade, both on and off the court. A dream start in every way.

Paul George is everything the Celtics could have hoped for and more

The Celtics’ motivation for trading Brown was as much about financial maneuvering and flexibility as it was the players involved—or so said Brad Stevens. His comments surrounding the shocking trade very much suggested that trading Brown was about getting off his contract while acquiring assets rather than pursuing George specifically to pair with Jayson Tatum. Paired with George’s underwhelming stint in Philadelphia and there was relatively little by way of expectations when it came to Boston’s offseason acquisition; more time was spent analyzing Mitchell Robinson’s signing than what George could bring to the table.

That may have been an oversight. George is complementing Tatum beautifully. He looks much better physically than at any point with the 76ers already. Most remarkable of all, he’s playing good enough basketball that you can make a good case Boston is just as well off with him instead of Brown—a genuinely unthinkable proposition when the jaw-dropping blockbuster was announced back in July.

In what’s shaping up to be his best season in years, George is averaging 20.4 points per game to go with 5.2 rebounds and 4.1 assists. He’s hitting a career-high 42.3% of his three-point attempts while taking 7.7 per night. Most impressively, PG-13 is racking up 2.3 steals per game, which ranks No. 3 in the NBA. George has slid into the starting lineup seamlessly on both ends as he leads Boston’s furious defensive activity while offering a similar kind of tough shot-making on the right nights that Brown did, if to a much lesser degree.

The most important thing is that he makes Tatum’s life easier in a way Brown never did. Which isn’t an insult to Brown’s capability—it’s a skill set issue. George is one of the league’s best catch-and-shoot three-point artists and is respected by opposing defenses as such. That means his man rarely leaves him when Tatum has the ball. George also makes it a point to set Tatum up at pretty much every opportunity; touches and possessions don’t matter to him in the slightest. There is no “your turn, my turn” offense in the manner of how we saw Tatum and Brown operate for all those years. It worked extremely well but did not benefit Tatum, specifically, the way we’re seeing George’s role in the offense buoy his superstar teammate.

That matters because if the front office was going to make the huge gamble of trading away Tatum’s best running mate, he must be better off for it or everything is sunk. So far he definitely is. His increased stats can’t be entirely attributed to working alongside George rather than Brown but his on-court partnership is much smoother in terms of the heavy ball movement offense the C’s are playing so far: Tatum is averaging 1.4 assists to George per game so far, while he never averaged more than one assist per game to Brown in nine years playing together.

Will it result in the same championship heights? That’s the ultimate question and one that won’t be answered for months yet. But over the summer it seemed like the Celtics flipped their homegrown superstar and Finals MVP for an over-the-hill, unreliable former All-Star who might not even be a top-three offensive option at this stage in his career. Now? It seems like they gave up Brown to add a veteran sharpshooter who fits like a glove into Joe Mazzulla’s system and is still good for around 20 points per night—with two tasty draft picks to boot.

It’s early days but we should be changing our perception of the Brown-George trade. It was (fairly!) at the time seen as a coup by the 76ers and a head-scratching, talent-draining decision by the Celtics. Now it seems like both teams got what they wanted and needed out of the trade.

A rare win-win. So far.

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