Jaylen Brown made his first appearance as a Sixer on Saturday, sitting courtside for the Philadelphia 76ers‘ Summer League finale in Las Vegas. Around him was an organization still processing how he got there. In a story published Monday, Gina Mizell of The Philadelphia Inquirer collected the accounts of how players and executives learned of the trade that sent Paul George and four picks to Boston — and nearly all of them were blindsided.
VJ Edgecombe was at a spa in the Bahamas when he missed several calls from executive vice president Jameer Nelson, then saw a text asking him to call back as soon as possible. “I was like, ‘Man, it’s free agency, why you calling me so much?’” Edgecombe told the Inquirer. “I thought I was gone.” The actual news still shocked him — “the last thing I expected” — and he called the deal bittersweet given his quick rapport with the outgoing Paul George. Justin Edwards was at the team facility and learned from a television segment: “I’m like, ‘Oh, snap!’ So I called ‘Rese and he was like, ‘Yeah, man, I knew since this morning.’” Dalen Terry slept through the initial wave of texts with his daughter on his chest.
The exception was president of basketball operations Mike Gansey, who made the deal by following front-office advice he picked up in Cleveland — make the call — and then went to work on Brown’s initial shock with a direct message: “I want you on my team.” Gansey’s caution is worth quoting in full: “You can’t win a trade in July. Until we actually have a practice or a game, you just don’t know.” Coach Nick Nurse was less guarded, telling reporters Brown is “sitting in his prime” and that “it’s amazing that he’s going to be a Sixer.”
The secrecy is the team-building detail that stands out. A trade of this size stayed quiet enough that players inside the team’s own facility learned about it from television — evidence of how tightly the front office guarded its leverage. The roster around Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid now gets a full training camp, opening in late September, to turn the shock into fit.
For fantasy purposes, Brown’s arrival compresses the scoring pie in Philadelphia: he averaged 28.7 points as Boston’s No. 1 option last season and will not see that volume alongside Maxey and Embiid, so a modest draft-day discount is warranted. Edgecombe’s wing minutes are the quiet variable — George’s departure clears a rotation lane that makes the second-year guard a late-round upside pick.
