Jaylen Brown commented on his relationship with former teammate Jayson Tatum after the Boston Celtics traded Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers during the offseason.
“I saw he said, ‘That’s not beef.’ And I think he’s right, there’s no problem,” Brown told reporters Saturday (0:11). “Jayson comes from a wonderful family, we’ve accomplished great things, he’s a hell of a basketball player and he’s got a great PR team. It’s not beef, but it can be little lamb chops and gravy, you know what I mean? He should stay ready at all times.”
“It is what it is,” he added. “There’s no beef, it should never be that. It’s just basketball. We’re both lucky. But it could be a little lamb chop. It’ll be fine.”
Boston sent Brown to Philadelphia while receiving Paul George, two first-round picks and two second-round picks in a July 1 trade.
Tatum said he was “just as caught off guard as the rest of the world” about the exchange in a video posted Thursday to his YouTube channel.
“Shams is coming,” Tatum said. “He hands me the towel. He’s like, ‘Yo, put this on your face. Don’t react. They just swapped it.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, shit.’ I’m like, ‘Where?’ He said, “Philly.” I said, “We traded him in the street?”
Brown, however, responded to the video with a cap emoji.
Still, Tatum explained that there was no hostility between them.
“For me, I understand that we’re in the entertainment business,” Tatum told reporters Friday. “Personally, I’m not really an off-the-court type of entertainer. For me, I don’t have any animosity or hatred or ill will toward him. I think what’s frustrating is that since he’s no longer been with the Celtics, there hasn’t been enough narrative or conversations about what we’ve accomplished. All the games we’ve won, winning a championship, how we’ve grown together. It’s turned into this kind of dramatic thing.”
“It’s not fucking King Shaq and Kobe,” he added.
In July, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported that Brown and Tatum’s relationship outside of basketball was “as close to non-existent as possible” throughout the year leading up to the trade.
During the 2025-26 season, Brown became Boston’s leading scorer while Tatum recovered from a torn Achilles. Tatum was able to return before the end of the regular season, although the Celtics ultimately fell in the first round of the playoffs.
Brown and Tatum still found immense success during their nine years as teammates, quickly becoming stars and leading Boston to several deep playoff runs.
They each played key roles on the Celtics’ 2024 championship team that went 64-18 in the regular season before going 16-3 in the playoffs.
There doesn’t appear to be any off-court animosity between Brown and Tatum, although the former is looking forward to their first regular-season meeting as opponents.
Boston will travel to face Philadelphia on November 10.
Gn sports
