Why the simmering Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum feud is good for the NBA -- and the 76ers-Celtics rivalry

Beef? Lamb chop? Whatever it is, the Brown and Tatum drama will be must-see TV when the Sixers and Celtics square off

Oct 27, 2026 at 1:24 pm ET • 5 min read

This is getting good. Even by NBA drama standards, the divorce between Jaylen Brown and the Celtics -- and with that the uncoupling of Brown and Jayson Tatum -- has reached a fever pitch. Temperatures are high, even though one side is angling for everyone to simmer down. The problem there is that the other side doesn't seem so interested in a cooling-off period. 

Which is frankly great for the rest of us who enjoy consuming NBA content. Some people will claim they aren't into the soap opera component of it all, but at its core the NBA is entertainment, and as captivating narratives go, it's hard to beat the old storyline where two friends/brothers/allies find themselves on separate sides of a growing divide. It's a classic of the genre. And now we have a captivating new entry. 

Since trading Brown to the 76ers, the Celtics and Tatum have done everything they can to diffuse any tension. That hasn't worked the way they probably hoped. Tatum's most recent attempt at a "move along, nothing to see here" crowd control approach has backfired spectacularly. He said he's heard about how when the Celtics play the Sixers for the first time this season -- go ahead and add that Nov. 10 date in Philadelphia to your calendar -- people will have their popcorn ready. Except he insisted this isn't a boxing match, it's basketball. 

"This ain't no f---in' Shaq and Kobe, there's no beef," Tatum claimed. "It's not about that. It should be more praise, and I understand that don't necessarily sell. Drama gets clicks and views, but I'm not really — that's not my thing." 

There's an adage in politics that when you're forced to deny something, you're already losing. The basketball bitterness equivalent is claiming you and your longtime former coworker aren't Shaq and Kobe. 

Tatum said he's "not much of an off-the-court entertainer type of guy," which is funny because as off-the-court entertainer type guys go, he's doing a bang-up job putting the quarter in and winding everyone up. Especially and including Brown, who has a few notes about the dynamic between the two former teammates who are now cast opposite each other in one of the most captivating rivalries the NBA has featured in some time. Over the weekend, Brown responded to the idea that there's no beef between them with a delicious answer that the internet couldn't gobble up fast enough. 

"It's no beef," Brown said, momentarily making everyone think he would pass on the topic before giving all of us something meaty to dine on. "But it might be a little lamb chop and some gravy. He should stay ready at all times."

Stay ready at all times. No need to pass the salt, there's plenty peppered throughout that statement. Brown seasoned his words with no small amount of thinly veiled disdain, adding a few times that Tatum has "a great PR team." That is one spicy response. 

Jaylen Brown's rep says reported trade request from Celtics is '10,000% a lie'

Sam Quinn

This situation had the potential to boil over almost immediately after Brown was traded to Philadelphia. When asked if he had spoken with Tatum around that time, Brown reportedly said no, that they had gone their separate ways.

But to hear Tatum tell it, he tried to reach out the day Brown stopped being a Celtic and started being a Sixer. Tatum said he called and texted. According to his recollection in his documentary "Summer of Jayson," Tatum was in Las Vegas when Celtics player development coach God Shammgod Jr. informed him what transpired. 

"[Shammgod] handed me a towel," Tatum said. "He was like, 'Yo, put this over your face. Don't react. They just traded [Brown].' I'm like, 'Oh, shit.' I'm like, 'Where?' He said, 'Philly.' I said, 'You traded him down the street?' So I was just as much caught off guard as the rest of the world." 

Sounds good from his end. The problem with the spin there was that Brown, who has never been shy about using social media to make his feelings known, popped up in the comments with a little blue cap, which is the emoji equivalent of James Harden openly calling Daryl Morey a liar.

And from there we were off and running, despite the Celtics trying to get everyone to slow down. Boston head coach Joe Mazzulla was asked about the acrimony and said he and the organization just "want to move forward." To that end, Mazzulla attempted to deflect by drowning everyone in some word soup about how Tatum and Brown had "great, great moments together" and did "great things." Great try. Can't believe that didn't work.

Neither did Tatum's attempt to employ a textbook crisis management strategy: blame the media, who he suggested "can push or speculate" on these sorts of things before adding "rightfully so, that's y'all's job."

A few things about that. The media isn't a monolith. We don't get together at weekly meetings to collectively pick over which topics get everyone's full attention. And if Tatum was trying to diffuse the matter, talking about it at length in his documentary series — then using the very same media he attempted to scapegoat — seems particularly ill-advised. No need for reporters to "push" a storyline forward when Tatum is so willing to do it himself, thereby inviting Brown to speculate about what his one-time running mate really meant in the process. Upon further consideration, maybe Tatum's PR team isn't as good as Brown (dismissively) suggested.

Despite Tatum's best wishes, none of this appears likely to go away anytime soon. That's great news for the NBA's entertainment industrial complex. The Celtics-Sixers feud frankly needed this kind of added juice. There's a lot of history and hostility between the two franchises, but much of it has been one-sided. As Joel Embiid once said, it's not really a rivalry when the Celtics always kick the Sixers' backsides. That was eight years ago. 

But more recently, the Sixers upset the Celtics in the first round of last year's playoffs, setting off an explosive chain of events in Boston that led to, as Tatum put it, Brown being traded down the road -- and LeBron James joining him shortly after. 

And now both teams are on a collision course of ill-will that makes for appointment viewing every time anyone opens their mouths — and will certainly be can't-miss TV when the two sides finally meet on the court in two weeks' time. Who knows what will transpire that evening — or between now and then. It's not just Tatum who should stay ready at all times. That goes for all of us. We wouldn't want to miss anything.