Jayson Tatum Gives Honest Thoughts on Jaylen Brown Celtics-76ers Trade in New ESPYs Video

Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum admitted this offseason has been "weird" with longtime teammate Jaylen Brown now on the Philadelphia 76ers after the C's engineered a blockbuster trade that brought Paul George and four draft picks back on July 6.

Tatum provided that answer amid a longer response to ESPN's Kevin Neghandi prior to the ESPY Awards on Wednesday.

"If I'm being transparent, it's weird, right? I've been on the Celtics for nine years, and he was my teammate every single one of those. You understand throughout the course of a career that the NBA is a business and people change teams and change coaches and front offices, but it doesn't make it any easier. There's still a human element of it that you feel those emotions, the city feels those emotions, but there's also a side that we have to welcome our teammates with open arms and we still have to attack the new season. So there's a balance, but it's weird."

It's clearly understandable for Tatum to feel that way. He and Brown played together on the Celtics for nine seasons and led the team to great success. Boston made the playoffs all nine of those campaigns, including one NBA title, two Eastern Conference championships and five Eastern Conference final appearances. The Celtics have gone 437-193 (.694 winning percentage) since 2017.

However, their time together is now over. President of basketball operations Brad Stevens explained his rationale to reporters in a press conference (h/t ESPN's Ohm Youngmisuk).

"When I looked at our team and where the league was heading, looked at the way that we've finished the last couple years and at the unbelievable way we've played in the regular season in the last couple years, the path looked a little bit more challenging to me," Stevens said. "I might be wrong. I'm not going to stand up here and be defensive about that, but the path looked a little bit more challenging, with 70% of our cap and such a high percent of our usage tied into two players [Brown and Jayson Tatum].

"The reality in this day and age at the NBA, and you could see it obviously with the last couple of champions ... you have to do a great job of building out depth that can hopefully replace the irreplaceable individual. And that's not an easy thing to do. And that's absolutely nothing against Jaylen. If you have Jaylen Brown on your team, you should feature him, you should use all those possessions and you should approach things that way. But I think the importance of depth and then obviously, we have to continue to work on ways to diversify our attack overall."

Tatum is the clear No. 1 option on the team now, though he'll be flanked with capable help including Paul George, Derrick White and Payton Pritchard.

It'll certainly be an interesting season in Boston, though, as the Celtics turn the page into a new era without Brown.