The Jaylen Brown trade saga has taken another unexpected turn.
After Brown and ex-Boston Celtics teammate Jayson Tatum addressed a potential “beef” between them — or “lamb chops and gravy,” as Brown put it — NBC Sports Boston analyst Brian Scalabrine added another layer to the story on Monday. Scal insinuated that Brown requested a trade out of Boston, and the C’s obliged by shipping him to the Philadelphia 76ers.
“My understanding of this thing is that he demanded to be traded. Not through the media, but to the organization,” Scalabrine said on his SiriusXM show, The Starting Lineup.
“My understanding is that Jaylen Brown went to the organization and had a list of demands, and it was like, ‘You either do this, or you trade me.’ And he was rooting to get traded to Milwaukee, including calling some other teammates about, ‘Hey, man, what do you think of Milwaukee? We should go there.’”
That contradicts what Brown said immediately following the trade. On his Twitch stream, the 2024 NBA Finals MVP vented about the “amount of respect” he was shown during the trade process and said he “wasn’t thrilled” with how Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens “facilitated some of the conversations.” He seemed genuinely blindsided by Boston’s decision to move on, stating that there’s “no loyalty in the NBA.”
Predictably, Scalabrine’s remarks caused quite a stir in the NBA world. He added more context to his comments before Monday’s Celtics-Bulls matchup at TD Garden.
“Technically, [Brown] didn’t demand to be traded,” Scal said on Celtics Pregame Live. “I just summed it all up. I summed up the entire word salad and kept it simple, but I think that’s what kind of got me in trouble there.
“I have no idea [what the demand was]. I don’t know what the ultimatum was or the demands or whatever it was. So technically, he did not demand to be traded. It was, ‘Do these things right here, or else.’ And one of them might have been, ‘Give me the $140 million extension.’ I haven’t gotten to the bottom of all that. I didn’t even know this was going to be a thing. It’s one of those things that lived in my mind for months. I finally used it because we were talking about the weirdest stuff, and now it’s out there.”
So according to Scalabrine, Brown didn’t demand a trade. Rather, he approached Boston’s front office with a “list of demands,” and the front office didn’t acquiesce.
If Brown stayed, the Celtics would have had to decide whether to sign him to a two-year extension worth around $140 million. With Tatum still owed $190 million on his deal, Stevens admitted that it would be difficult to forge a path forward with both stars.
“I might be wrong. I’m not going to stand up here and be defensive about that, but the path looked a little bit more challenging, with 70 percent of our cap and such a high percent of our usage tied into two players,” he said at the time.
If nothing else, the latest Jaylen Brown drama has made the upcoming showdown between the C’s and Sixers even more interesting. Brown and Tatum’s first official game against one another is scheduled for Nov. 10 in Philly.
