LAS VEGAS — As Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum sat in the front row of UNLV’s Cox Pavilion Friday night, a graphic on the video screen inside the arena showed a list of accomplishments he and Jaylen Brown produced over their nine seasons as teammates.For a matter of seconds, Brown — or at least a graphic of him — was literally hanging over the Celtics. For the rest of their time in Las Vegas, his presence has only metaphorically loomed over the team. The shock of their recent trade, which sent Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers for Paul George and draft capital, should take a while to disappear.As Derrick White and Jordan Walsh went through a workout on one of the Cox Pavilion courts Saturday morning, head coach Joe Mazzulla detailed the respect he has for Brown, what Boston will miss most about him and the need to create a new path forward without him. After 10 highly successful seasons with Brown, Boston will take on a different look with Paul George, Mitchell Robinson and Mike Conley now on the roster.“There needs to be a grieving process for losing not just a player in Jaylen, but a person in Jaylen,” Mazzulla said in an interview with The Athletic. “There needs to be a grieving process that this guy, what he has done on the court and what he’s done in the community and what he’s done for the city of Boston, there should be a grieving process. But the … gray area is throughout that loss, you’re also gaining.”Why did the Celtics trade Jaylen Brown?Jay King and Jeshua KiddWhile recently explaining his reasoning for the Brown trade, Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens emphasized future “optionality” after adding two valuable first-round draft picks in the deal. He said the franchise did not believe it was wise to commit 70 percent of the salary cap to Brown and Jayson Tatum, as the Celtics would have needed to do with Brown still on the roster. Ironically enough, with George on a similar salary, the franchise will still have a similar financial commitment to its two highest-paid players. However, George has one less year remaining on his contract, and the extra picks could help Boston rearrange the roster eventually.Mazzulla also believes in the three veterans the Celtics acquired this summer. He hopes to use where Robinson, George and Conley are in their respective careers to help next season’s team.“We’re getting three guys back,” Mazzulla said. “One guy was a champion. So, we can leverage the experience that he had in the current moment of like, ‘Hey, what worked for you guys? How can we learn from little stuff that you did?’ And there’s two guys that haven’t (won a championship) yet. And how can we leverage, for lack of a better phrase, the hungriness or the desperation that they may have to try and get to that point? And then we have a group of guys who have felt both winning and losing, and losing hurts worse after you’ve won because now you’ve felt both sides of that. So, we have different experiences in the locker room that we need to try to recreate and just take advantage of those off-the-court experiences and then (determine) how can we help them on the court.”After squaring off against Robinson and George in recent playoff series, the Celtics have plenty of respect for the two newcomers. During a 2025 playoff series against the Knicks, Mazzulla orchestrated a “Hack-a-Mitch” strategy, in part hoping to force Robinson out of the game. Throughout that series, the Celtics’ approach to Robinson’s minutes made it clear Mazzulla considered him an extremely valuable player. Mazzulla said the big man’s impact goes beyond his elite offensive rebounding.