The Boston Celtics and Jaylen Brown were on top of the world in 2024, but it appears all isn’t well behind the scenes now. Hall of Famer Tracy McGrady revealed on his Cousins with Vince Carter & Tracy McGrady podcast that Brown is frustrated with the Celtics.
“I think his frustration lies deeply within the organization and other things that… we don’t really have details to,” McGrady said. “It’s just been a lot of stuff that I’ve been hearing just going on with the Boston organization with JB. So I think part of him is like, I showed you guys more of who I am as a basketball player.
“Not only just what I did on the basketball court, but the leadership that I displayed within this team, and you’ve seen that, not having our best player in [Jayson Tatum],” McGrady added. “You seen the different side of me and what I’m able to bring to the game of basketball. So, all that stuff I think just came into play with him and his frustration.”
Perhaps Brown, the 2024 Finals MVP, feels he deserves some more respect from the Celtics? While their season ended in disappointing fashion with a blown 3-1 lead to the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round of the playoffs, no one on the outside believed they were going to be any good this season.
The Celtics had lost Jayson Tatum to a torn Achilles in the 2025 playoffs and then traded away key pieces in Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis in the offseason. The expectation before this 2025-26 campaign was that this would be a team that would struggle to avoid the play-in tournament.
The Celtics instead finished with an excellent 56-26 record to grab the second seed in the Eastern Conference. Brown was the biggest reason why, as he averaged 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds, 5.1 assists, 1.0 steals, and 0.4 blocks per game. The 29-year-old was even getting some MVP buzz for his play for the first time in his career.
It was all going well, but things didn’t go according to plan in the postseason, even with Tatum returning. The Celtics appeared to have booked their ticket to the next round with their dominant 128-96 win over the 76ers in Game 4. They had never blown a 3-1 lead in franchise history, and it didn’t look like it was going to happen this time around either.
The 76ers then managed to win three games in a row to knock out the Celtics. Joel Embiid led the charge, and Brown admitted after Game 7 that they had no answers for him. He also called out Embiid for flopping, though.
Then a day later, Brown called out Embiid again and claimed the officials have an agenda against him. The five-time All-Star’s frustrations over losing the series and the issues McGrady brought up here might have contributed to the outbursts.
Now, you might tend to take reports from former players with a pinch of salt at times, but McGrady might be a pretty reliable source when it comes to Brown. These two are close, and the Hall of Famer is like his mentor.
Brown had even appeared on the podcast back in March, and he revealed that McGrady had convinced him not to ask for a trade after the Celtics lost to the Milwaukee Bucks in the 2019 playoffs.
So, this might well be a situation to keep an eye on. Brown hasn’t publicly spoken about having an issue with the Celtics, but with the way he has been going off lately, we might find something out on one of his Twitch streams.
