Jayson Tatum And Jaylen Brown’s Beef Is Severely Undercooked

The weightlessness of the early season and the ever-increasing rate of injuries can make it hard to sell a weeknight NBA game in November. There remains, however, a reliable shortcut between “box score I’ll check in the morning” and “game I gotta watch live,” and it is a route lined with beef.

Beef was not promised in the lead up to Monday night’s game between the Celtics and 76ers, which pit former teammates Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum against each other for the first time since Brown was traded in the offseason, but a savory aroma was in the air. Brown’s trade brought with it all sorts of thinly sourced reports about he and Tatum having a contentious relationship, and those suspicions were more or less confirmed a few weeks ago. On Oct. 22, Tatum posted on YouTube another episode of his self-produced documentary series. A clip of this episode, in which Tatum recounts the shock he felt when he found out that Brown had been traded—”You traded him down the street?” he says to the person who broke the news—was posted on Instagram, and in the comments section of that post Brown responded with the “cap” emoji.

Brown was calling Tatum a liar, which was enough to elicit some direct questions about their relationship from reporters. ​”Jayson’s a great guy,” Brown said. “Like I said, great family, hell of a basketball player, hell of a PR team. There’s no beef, but it might be a little lamb chops, and some gravy, you know what I mean? He should stay ready at all times.”