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

Celtics broadcaster Brian Scalabrine said Monday that Brown requested a trade out of Boston; the 76ers star's PR team pushed back

Oct 27, 2026 at 9:19 am ET • 2 min read

The 2026-27 season is underway, and Jaylen Brown is playing well for the new-look Philadelphia 76ers, but nobody seems ready to close the book on his time with the Boston Celtics. Jayson Tatum attempted to shut down reports of a rift between himself and Brown by saying "This ain't no f---in' Shaq and Kobe, there's no beef." Brown responded by saying "He's got a great PR team," and "it's no beef, but it might be a little lamb chop. And some gravy."

On Monday, Celtics broadcaster and former Boston forward Brian Scalabrine threw fuel on the fire by mentioning some previously unreported details of the split. "My understanding of this thing is that he demanded to be traded. Not to the media, but to the organization," Scalabrine said on his Sirius XM radio show Monday. "... My understanding is Jaylen Brown went to the organization and had a list of demands. And it was like, 'You either do this or you trade me.'"

Scalabrine did not elaborate on what those demands were, but claimed that Brown was rooting for a trade to the Milwaukee Bucks. The Celtics attempted to swap Brown for Giannis Antetokounmpo earlier in the offseason, but the Bucks elected to send him to the Miami Heat instead.

Brown's camp, meanwhile, told ESPN that the idea that he requested a trade or made a list of demands to the Celtics is "10,000% a lie." Scalabrine himself even recanted what he said hours later. "After the 48 calls I tended today, and I listened. Technically, he didn't demand to be traded," Scalabrine said before the Celtics game, using air quotes around the word technically. When asked what Brown's demands were, Scalabrine responded by saying, "I have no idea. I have no idea. I don't know what the ultimatum was, or the demands or whatever it was. But, so, technically he did not demand to be traded, it was 'do these things right here or else.'"

While Scalabrine alluded to a possible contract extension as one such demand, he did not confirm anything specific. When Brown was traded in July, ESPN reported that Brown never made a trade request. However, as Scalabrine suggests, there's quite a bit of grey area between a player officially asking to be traded and a player happily remaining with a team. We've heard Boston's side of the story through Brad Stevens at his press conference following the trade, but we will likely never know all of the details involved in Brown's departure. How he felt about the team and whether or not a return was salvageable after last season probably isn't knowable no matter how much all parties involved continue to talk about this in public.