Jaylen Brown's time in Boston has come to a surprising end, with the Celtics deciding to trade him to one of their most storied rivals.

Brown — the 2024 NBA Finals MVP, a five-time All-Star and the league's fourth-leading scorer this past season — is getting traded to the Philadelphia 76ers, a person with knowledge of the deal's terms told The Associated Press on Wednesday (Thursday AEST).

Boston are getting 36-year-old Paul George, along with a slew of draft capital that could become two first-round picks and two second-round picks.

Add this to the list of blockbuster moves across the NBA so far this off-season. LeBron James is leaving the Los Angeles Lakers as a free agent, Giannis Antetokounmpo is going from Milwaukee to Miami, Kawhi Leonard and Brandon Ingram headline a swap between the Toronto Raptors and Los Angeles Clippers and Ja Morant is getting traded to Portland by Memphis.

It's a move that breaks up what has been one of the league's most successful one-two punches in Brown and Jayson Tatum, who helped carry the Celtics to the 2024 NBA title.

Tatum missed most of this past season while recovering from an Achilles tear that happened during the 2025 playoffs, meaning Brown had to carry even more of the load for Boston — and he wound up with career-best averages of 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds and 5.1 assists per game.

"Nobody has won more combined regular-season and playoff games since I entered the league 10 years ago," Brown posted on social media over the weekend.

He's right: The Celtics have won 523 games with Brown in the line-up, including playoff contests, which is six more than Denver have won with Nikola Jokic over that span.

Brown now gets to be part of a Sixers squad alongside guard Tyrese Maxey and centre Joel Embiid — someone who Brown recently called a flopper on a livestream.

Brown, Maxey (the league's No.5 scorer this past season) and Embiid (a two-time NBA scoring champion) could become a positively frightening trio in Philadelphia.

George averaged just 16.7 points in his two campaigns with the 76ers after topping the 20-point mark in nine straight seasons with Indiana, Oklahoma City and the LA Clippers.

"Philadelphia is a good basketball team," Brown said after last season's Game 7 playoff loss to the 76ers, surely not knowing at that time that he would be joining them a couple months later.

His job now will be to make that good basketball team even better.