Jaylen Brown Is a Sixer Now, and Jayson Tatum Says He's Ready to Lead Alone

For nine years, Jayson Tatum had Jaylen Brown next to him. This season Brown is in Philadelphia, and the Celtics are Tatum's team alone.

"Yeah, very comfortable. This is Year 10," Tatum said at media day Monday when asked about leading the Celtics on his own. "Leadership is about a lot of different things. Awareness is the biggest one."

The Brown trade was mostly about money. Two $300 million contracts weren't going to fit under Boston's cap for long, so the Celtics kept Tatum and sent the 2024 Finals MVP to a division rival that also added LeBron James this summer. Tatum called it "the business of the NBA" and said he's grateful for what the two of them did together.

Boston got Paul George back in the deal and added Mitchell Robinson and Mike Conley Jr. George, who missed most of the 2014-15 season after breaking his leg, knows something about coming back from a serious injury. "Obviously, JT is the guy," George said. "I'm there to support him in all facets."

Tatum is 16 months past surgery for the Achilles he tore in the 2025 playoffs. He missed Game 7 of last season's first-round series against the 76ers, but says he feels "much better than I did this time last year" after a full offseason to get stronger.

Joe Mazzulla doesn't want to frame the season around who's missing. "I don't think that it's necessarily the phrase 'without Jaylen,'" he said. The first meeting with Brown and the Sixers will be the first real test of that.