P.J. Tucker, the former NBA veteran who has also played for the 76ers, sat down with Jeff Teague for a conversation on his Club 520 podcast.
Amid multiple noteworthy stories and predictions, Tucker also made a bold assertion during the podcast episode. He claimed that the Celtics were not the clear losers in the trade for Jaylen Brown.
“If you look at the playoff series this year. PG might have had a better series than JB. So how does Philly win? I think it’s tough. I’m rocking with PG. Like, I’m hating how everybody I mean, respect to JB, but PG is still a hell of a player.”
“If PG don’t get suspended and all that stuff don’t happen, then I think we having another conversation,” Tucker said assertively.
To compare the performance of these players, let’s understand how they performed in the 2025-26 playoff series where their two teams went head-to-head.
In the seven games that the 76ers played against the Celtics in that series, Paul George averaged 17.4 points, 4.0 rebounds and 3.0 assists while shooting 48.9% from the floor and 55.0% from behind the three-point line as the third option on offense behind Tyrese Maxey and eventually Joel Embiid, who had just returned from injury at the time.
On the other hand, Jaylen Brown averaged 25.7 points, 5.7 rebounds and 3.3 assists while shooting 45.5% from the field and 40.5% from beyond the arc, having taken over as the Celtics’ first option in Jayson Tatum’s absence, even through most of the season.
Now, before you conclude that Brown is statistically better, also compare the volume of their shooting. Brown averaged over 20 attempts per game in that series while George averaged almost 12 attempts.
This shows that had George been put in Brown’s shoes, where he took 20 shots per game in that series, he would almost certainly have had better averages than Brown.
“I’m still liking JT and PG in a series. I like the Celtics, bro… There’s pressure on JB, yes it is. Man, you’re going in there, there’s Embiid, there’s Maxey, you’re lowkey third to them,” said Tucker before he argued that Embiid’s 2023 MVP award is more valuable than Brown’s 2024 Finals MVP and how a healthy Embiid impacts much more than Brown.
So let’s compare if he’s actually correct. Joel Embiid averaged 33.1 points, 10.2 rebounds, and 4.2 assists for 66 games while shooting 54.8% from the field in his MVP season.
Meanwhile, Jaylen Brown averaged 20.8 points, 5.4 rebounds, and 5.0 assists while shooting 44.0% from the floor in the five NBA Finals games he played in 2024. Even when Jaylen Brown was in the regular season MVP conversation in 2025-26, he averaged 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 5.1 assists in 71 games while going 47.7% from the field.
It is clear that even in the prime of his career so far, Brown’s best performances have been nowhere close to what Joel Embiid could produce in his.
Therefore, there could be a certain amount of pressure that Brown faces now in figuring out his chemistry with three ball-heavy players in Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, and V.J. Edgecombe. While Paul George will not have more freedom as the secondary option behind a recovering Jayson Tatum.
Moreover, the last time the Celtics traded away a superstar (Kevin Garnett), they landed the draft assets that got them Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown for their future. Therefore, it cannot be a foregone conclusion that the Celtics lost this trade, despite George being six years older than Brown.
Even though the 76ers have more firepower on paper, there is a lot more room for things to go wrong there than with the Celtics. So I am inclined to agree with Tucker on this opinion.
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