Grading Brown-George trade: Did 76ers or Celtics win blockbuster?

Giannis Antetokounmpo is finally a member of the Miami Heat. Kawhi Leonard is back with the Toronto Raptors. LaMelo Ball and Anthony Edwards are teammates.

This NBA offseason has been full of exciting, league-shaking trades -- but the most surprising of them all arrived with a splash Wednesday night, as the Boston Celtics traded Jaylen Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers in exchange for Paul George, two first-round picks and two second-round picks.

According to ESPN insider Shams Charania, Philadelphia sent Boston a 2028 first-round pick that could convert from a first to a more favorable swap for Boston, a 2031 unprotected first-round pick, a 2028 second-rounder (most favorable of GSW/OKC/MIL) and a 2030 second-rounder (most favorable of WAS/POR/PHX).

Just two years ago, Brown won Finals MVP; just two months ago, he finished sixth in the regular-season MVP vote after the best individual season of his career. And now he'll play for one of Boston's biggest rivals after 10 years with the Celtics.

Let's grade this stunner, starting with an attempt -- perhaps futile -- to justify Boston's logic.

Boston Celtics: D+

Here's a hot take, right off the bat: The Celtics might very well win 50-plus games again next season. After all, they went 56-26 last season despite only 16 games with Jayson Tatum, who was recovering from a torn Achilles.

If Tatum is fully healthy next season, he could mimic Brown's 2025-26 production. And the Celtics have otherwise improved this summer, as they added Mitchell Robinson and have thus far retained the rest of the core that powered their surprisingly strong season.

Yet that's a glib way to start this analysis because swapping Brown for George makes the Celtics worse. It clearly makes them worse. Crucially, it lowers their playoff ceiling, even if the likes of Hugo Gonzalez, Baylor Scheierman and Jordan Walsh might mash together enough solid minutes to try to replace the departed All-Star throughout the regular season.

It's utterly strange that the Celtics would willingly take such a giant step back. This is the most successful franchise of the decade: In the 2020s, Boston ranks first in regular-season wins and playoff wins, and it's the only team to both win a championship and make another Finals.

Just 10 days ago, the Celtics were trying to trade for Giannis Antetokounmpo, a win-now superstar who would have raised their playoff ceiling. Just earlier on Wednesday, they signed the injury-prone Robinson to a free agent contract, seemingly because he'd boost their performance more in the postseason than over the course of the first 82 games.

But now they're pivoting in the other direction. Either the Celtics will quickly package the two first-round picks they received in this deal for a different star, or they're seemingly content with another year of not going all-in for a title.

That route was understandable last season as they reset their finances while expecting to slump in Tatum's absence. But it's much less understandable in 2026-27, with Tatum now 28 years old and facing a potentially shrunken prime due to his injury and 32-year-oldDerrick Whiteon the verge of decline.

Clearly, the Celtics decided that their relationship with Brown had soured past the point of no return, following various small mishaps and the rumors that he'd be included in an Antetokounmpo trade. But even in a deal-him-at-all-costs scenario, this return is mighty underwhelming.

Half a decade ago, George would have been a solid cornerstone in a Brown trade, but at 36 years old, he has declined significantly from his peak. George was actually a solid role player down the stretch last season -- but only after he'd served a two-month, 25-game suspension for violating the league's anti-drug policy.

In two seasons in Philadelphia, George played a combined 78 games. He has exceeded 56 games in a season just once since 2018-19, which was so long ago that he hadn't even joined the Clippers yet.

As George is owed $54.1 million next season and $56.6 million (on a player option) in 2027-28, he's on one of the least team-friendly contracts in the league. If the 76ers had tried to dump that deal on a team with cap space, they would have had to include at least one first-round pick as enticement, so the value for Brown alone looks even lower.

It's fair to wonder just how much Brown is worth, given his own elevated contract -- $57.1 million in 2026-27, $61.0 million in 2027-28 and $65.0 million in 2028-29 -- and the disconnect between his traditional and advanced stats.

This topic became a controversy on social media over the past week, and it's worth exploring in more depth when thinking about his stunning trade return. Compared with raw box score stats, more advanced metrics are indeed skeptical of Brown. This is in part due to his lackluster on/off numbers: Boston has been better with Brown off the court for most of the seasons in his career, including the past four, per Cleaning the Glass.

As a No. 1 scoring option, Brown put up excellent numbers last season, averaging 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds and 5.1 assists per game. But he doesn't match that elite production with elite efficiency.

Brown's 57% career true shooting is exactly league average over the course of his career, per Basketball Reference. Even looking at only the past four seasons, which include both of his All-NBA campaigns, his true shooting ranks 24th out of the 30 highest-usage players in the league. The players closest to him are De'Aaron Fox, Trae Young and Brandon Ingram, none of whom profiles as a franchise-changing superstar, and all of whom were dealt for somewhat underwhelming returns over the past 18 months.

Nor is Brown the most fluid passer, with just 2.9 assists per game compared with 2.3 turnovers over the course of his career. As his playmaking responsibilities have risen in recent seasons, so have his giveaways: Over the past four seasons, 85 players have averaged at least four assists per game, and Brown ranks 84th among that group in assist-to-turnover ratio. (The only player below him, incidentally, is his new teammate, Joel Embiid.)

Against that context, it makes sense that other teams wouldn't be as eager to part with an all-in package of picks as Brown's surface stats and accolades would suggest. But there's a yawning chasm between the four first-round picks, two good young players and one swap that Kevin Durant fetched in his 2023 trade from the Nets to the Suns, and the mere two first-round picks and one underwater contract that the Celtics landed in this deal.

Brad Stevens has nailed almost every move -- big and small -- since becoming the Celtics' president of basketball operations. It almost feels wrong to question his expertise. But if this was the best return the Celtics could find for Brown, then it's difficult not to think that they should have tried to patch up that relationship, rather than drastically reduce their 2026-27 title odds and not even save much money in the deal.

The entire process of this trade, from its impetus to its ultimate execution, is baffling.

Philadelphia 76ers: A-

Brown could be a very good fit in Philadelphia. The 76ers have two excellent guards in Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, and one excellent-when-healthy center in Joel Embiid. But they've never had adequate forwards to connect those positional strengths, and George on a maximum contract was evidently not the answer.

Dean Wade seemed like a worthwhile solution when the 76ers agreed to a four-year deal with him on Tuesday. But Brown is on a completely different level from anyone the 76ers have tried there before. He can step up and handle more of the scoring load when the oft-injured Embiid misses time, he can operate as a secondary playmaker next to Maxey, and he can provide strong perimeter defense, particularly if he's not expending so much of his energy on the offensive end.

Brown could also be a very awkward fit in Philadelphia. He hasn't played with an elite ball-dominant point guard in years, since Kyrie Irving's fairly disastrous tenure in Boston, and he has never played with a post presence like Embiid.

If Brown's relationship with the Celtics had fallen into disrepair in part because of his desire to be a No. 1 option, after getting a taste of that life during Tatum's absence, then he won't be sated in Philadelphia. On nights when Embiid plays, Brown will arguably be the third option on his team, which is even lower on the pecking order than he was in Boston.

Last season, Brown ranked second among qualified players with a 36.2% usage rate. But Maxey's usage has been 29-30% over the past two seasons, and Embiid has never had a usage rate below 33%. There are only so many shots to go around. (In that light, signing Wade, who has one of the NBA's lowest usage rates, seems even smarter.)

But as a pure talent play, trading this package for Brown should have been an incredibly easy decision for the 76ers' new front office. They're swapping a declining role player for an All-NBA star who's six years younger and still at his peak, and they're not giving up close to all the draft capital they could have in the process.

Brown is signed for one more season than George, and he's eligible for an expensive extension after that, so the finances aren't a perfect match. Yet Philadelphia was already limited in its financial flexibility by George's and Embiid's contracts, and the team still didn't have any realistic title chances to show for it.

The 76ers famously haven't reached the conference finals since 2001, whereas Brown has been a member of six conference finals squads by himself. He raises the 76ers' ceiling considerably while not making their cap sheet much more complicated than it already was.

Whether such disparate stars as Maxey, Brown and Embiid can coexist, whether Embiid can ever be healthy enough in the playoffs for it to matter, or whether Brown's ball dominance hampers Edgecombe's development remains to be seen.

But the 76ers entered this offseason with the profile of a fringe playoff team at best after three consecutive years in which they were a play-in team twice and a 24-58 bottom-feeder once. Now they look like a legitimate contender to reach the Finals -- all thanks to their greatest historical rival.

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