Celtics Star Makes Honest Confession About "Friend" Jaylen Brown's Trade to 76ers

When the shock of Jaylen Brown's trade to Philadelphia was still fresh, Neemias Queta stood in a Las Vegas gym at Summer League and admitted the news hadn't fully sunk in for Boston's locker room. At a community event across the river in Cambridge, Queta is still processing the same reality, and this time, he's being even more direct about what losing his friend actually cost the Celtics.

Speaking at the unveiling of a newly renovated basketball court in Cambridge, a project by the Portuguese company Hoopers, Queta was asked about the trade. His answer carried the same honesty that's defined his comments on the subject all summer.

"It's a part of the business, you know?" Queta said.

"It's tough to see one of your teammates and friends go," he continued. "At the end of the day, it's a part of the business, and we've just got to stay locked in on what we can control and being able to welcome new teammates."

The trade itself marked the end of a nine-season run in Boston for Brown. A stretch that included two trips to the NBA Finals and the franchise's 2024 championship before he was dealt to Philadelphia for George and four future draft picks. 

The Celtics locked in Queta into a four-year, $56 million extension that same offseason. He watched a veteran leader depart the same summer his own long-term future in Boston was secured. That has made his measured, business-first response to the trade stand out even more against the emotion shown by some of his teammates.

Queta wasn't the only one still working through the trade months later. Derrick White, who found out about the move while at home with his wife, described Brown as "an amazing teammate, amazing friend" who had personally welcomed him to Boston after his own trade to the Celtics years earlier. "It's tough to see someone get traded," White said, "and it's obviously always tough to get traded, and I know how that feels."

Guard Payton Pritchard shared a similar sentiment in a separate interview. He called the trade part of an NBA landscape where "changes happen all the time" even as it stings to lose "a brother and a teammate." Queta, for his part, said he'd already reached out to Brown personally after the deal, thanking him for pushing him to improve every day in practice and promising to stay in touch even with the two now playing in different conferences.

Two months and multiple interviews later, the message from Boston's locker room hasn't really changed. There’s genuine gratitude for what Brown built over nine seasons, in the same blunt acceptance that pro sports rarely let anyone stay in one place forever.