League rules prevent Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens from publicly explaining any of his reasoning for the still-very-hard-to-process Jaylen Brown trade to Philadelphia until the deal is made official.
Which means Monday is the soonest that we are likely to hear from Stevens on Boston’s motivations, trade timing, what the Celtics and the NBA’s newly crowned Executive of the Year were willing to settle for as a return package for a player who just finished sixth in MVP voting.
All of it.
As for Brown’s reaction …
Jaylen Brown@FCHWPO
11:49 PM · Jul 2, 2026 · 941K Views
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The (gasp) former Celtic naturally took immediately to Twitch on Thursday night to speak out about essentially being salary-dumped to the 76ers not even two weeks after Boston made a determined run to try to beat out Miami in the trade chase for Giannis Antetokounmpo by building its Giannis offer around the 2024 NBA Finals MVP.
We know now that The Giannis Sweepstakes merely tipped off one of the wildest stretches ever witnessed in #thisleague when it comes purely to trade activity. So your trusty correspondents here at The Stein Line, while Brown was broadcasting, spent the evening assembling another one of our trademark Late Night Intel compilations to tackle what will be happening next in an NBA offseason that seems certain to deliver a few more transactional twists and turns.
It’s been trades, trades and more trades in the NBA as this social media graphic from TSN in Canada illustrates.
To the latest must-read notes …
Where else to start but with LeBron James’ future?