Paul George Stole Jaylen Brown's Revenge Night in Philadelphia

The night was sold as a feud. Philadelphia's own arena staff played "Why Can't We Be Friends?" over the speakers while Boston warmed up in the morning, and when Jayson Tatum reached for Jaylen Brown before the opening tip — a tap on the shoulder, a thump on the chest — Brown ignored him and walked on. Tatum shook hands with LeBron James instead and got a hug. Then the game started, and the player nobody had billed took the evening away from both of them.

Paul George scored 36 points in his first game back in Philadelphia, and Boston beat the 76ers 123–101 at Xfinity Mobile Arena. The full game record sits on the Game Center page. George was the other half of July's blockbuster — Brown to Philadelphia, George, two first-round picks and two second-round picks to Boston — and almost all of the noise since has been about Brown and Tatum. George spent two seasons as a Sixer. On Tuesday he played like the building still owed him something.

Brown's night went wrong early and never came back. He picked up his second foul with 6:48 left in the first quarter and his fourth early in the second half, and finished with 13 points, four turnovers and the worst plus-minus on the floor. Tatum had 11 points in the first quarter as Boston led 30–23, and George had 17 by halftime — 13 of them in the second quarter — as the Celtics carried a 62–51 lead into the locker room. The one scare of the half belonged to Joel Embiid, who landed awkwardly on a missed layup late in the second quarter, stayed down while play went the other way, and limped through the final seconds before the horn. He started the third quarter and hit his first three-pointer since the second game of the season.

Philadelphia's best stretch came with Brown on the bench. The Sixers erased the lead in the third quarter — Dean Wade's three tied it at 76, and Tyrese Maxey's three tied it again at 79 with 3:19 left in the period. Boston answered with the kind of run that ends arguments: a 12–3 close to the quarter, four different Celtics — Payton Pritchard, Sam Hauser, Tatum and Baylor Scheierman — hitting a three apiece, on top of a Tatum dunk over James that belonged on the night's poster. Pritchard opened the fourth with two more threes. Then George scored 14 points in a four-minute stretch, celebrated one three with a bowling motion toward the visitors' bench as the lead hit 100–82, and pushed it to 111–87 before the benches emptied. Boston led by as many as 29.

The trade's scorecard, for one night, is not close. George: 36 points on 14-of-22 shooting, six of 11 from three, five rebounds, one turnover in 30 minutes. Brown: 13 points on four of nine, four turnovers, minus-27 in 26 minutes. George outscored Embiid and James by himself — Embiid needed 13 free throws to reach 16 points on 2-of-9 shooting, and James scored 11 on 4-of-12. Maxey, efficient at 24 points on eight of 12, was the only Sixer who matched Boston's level. Boston made 22 of its 49 threes, with Pritchard scoring 18 and Hauser 12 off the bench, each hitting four from deep. And George did all of it in a building where, across two seasons wearing the home uniform, he scored more than 36 only once — a 39-point game.

George has been saying plainly what he thinks his job in Boston is. "At this point in my career, there's only one thing I want to do, and that's win," he said on NBA Showtime, describing his role next to Tatum as service: "I'm here to help you — I'm in a way here to serve you, make you become the best player that you can become." Tuesday was what that looks like when the serving comes with 36 points attached. Tatum finished with 21 points, six rebounds, four assists and two blocks, and the two of them never let the feud they were supposed to be supporting actors in become the story.

The win was Boston's fourth straight and moved the Celtics to 9–2, the best record in the East, a game ahead of the 9–3 Sixers. It was also the teams' first meeting since Philadelphia rallied from 3–1 down to beat Boston in the first round of last spring's playoffs — so the Sixers have now lost the rematch on both stages that mattered, the series memory and the trade. They host Toronto on Thursday. Round two of this one is January 21 in Boston, when Brown walks back into TD Garden and tries to take back a night that, on Tuesday, belonged entirely to the man he was traded for.