Jaylen Brown has always been an interesting person. Having been around the team as much as I have the past few years, I’ve always found Brown and his path through life to be fascinating.
I think the starting point with Brown has to be that he’s his own man, and that he doesn’t seem to be one for fitting a mold. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Brown wants to break as many molds as he does ankles on the court.
Molds are pre-made things. They have been created by someone else, and when you press something into them, they become someone else’s creation. I’m not going to pretend to know Brown on a personal level here, but I can bet the notion of fitting someone else’s mold is off-putting at best.
Brown is a thinker. He ponders things. He looks at things going on around him and questions them. For better or worse, he’s not satisfied with any status quo, even if that status quo completely benefits him. He’s not going to shut up and dribble, no matter how much money is coming his way.
This is the baseline for considering what Brown said in recent interviews with The Ringer and New York Times. He didn’t give, nor should we ever really expect, the typical canned answers. Sure, he has some patterns (“just trying to be aggressive” when he’s asked about his scoring is a popular standby), but he’s not one for cliches or platitudes.
“I prefer to be alone at times,” Brown says. “I’m not saying that because it sounds cool or it’s the healthiest thing. I think it’s how I’m designed. I’m OK with being alone. I like space. Quarantine was fine for me. There was nothing wrong with quarantine. So, that’s just how I am. I go through times where you like human interaction. But a lot of the time, I’m fine with all of you humans leaving me alone.”
I’m starting with this quote because, to me, this is the most fascinating aspect of Brown’s personality. The acknowledgment that his stance may be unhealthy is what stands out the most to me.
The opening line from the Geto Boys classic rap song “Mind Playing Tricks On Me” pops into my head when I read that quote.
“I sit alone in my four-cornered room staring at candles”
I think I understand Brown at the base level. Contemplative people are often at odds with their own thoughts. The preference to be alone allows one to be unburdened by the outside noise interrupting your internal monologue, but also it can lead you down some dark and winding roads without some outside interaction to balance that out.
I definitely understand what that's like.
The issue with that is if you’re not careful, contemplative time alone can really be a drag. With no one to check your insecurities, you run the real risk of letting those get the best of you. That's hard for anyone.
I’m not saying any of this to garner sympathy for Brown. I think this quote, and this mentality, is critically important to understanding the person wearing number 7 for the Boston Celtics. He has said a lot of things recently, and the default status for fans is to demand nothing but perfection from humans who are inherently imperfect. One thing I have always hoped to accomplish is to make everyone understand that every person who walks through that locker room is still a human being who happens to have a genetic gift to play this particular sport at the highest possible level.
Yes, they get an ungodly compensation. With that comes responsibility to be available to the fans who spend their money, to the community who supports them, and to the franchise that employs them. But it doesn’t erase their humanity. And that's important to understand, especially when it comes to Jaylen Brown.
His future is tied up in how he thinks and feels; how he views the world around him. The answers he gives when it comes to basketball, his teammates, and his future, all start with that one quote. Who he is at his core is the sun, and how he plays, who he plays with, and where he is employed are all planetary questions that revolve around that.
“Me, I feel like I still have so many more limits to tap individually. To be better, to be a better leader, to be a better player, et cetera. As for now, I’m just playing my role on the team to help us get back to do what we got to do. So, nothing wrong with being a part of a team and doing your job. That’s how I look at it.”
Setting up a quote about your potential and transitioning to your current, lesser role with “as for now” is a message veiled so thinly it could have come off Kramer’s meat slicer.
He feels like he can do more, and he’s sacrificing right now.
This is the basis for a lot of worries around Boston. The perceived desire for him to be the main guy somewhere else, coupled with the recent trend of the Celtics leaning much more heavily on Jayson Tatum down the stretch, has fueled all sorts of speculation about his future. This quote about his future with Tatum doesn’t quell any fears, either:
“I just enjoy the time that you have now … If it’s your whole career, it’s your whole career. If it’s not, it’s not. Some of the greatest players of all time haven’t finished with their organization. Michael Jordan retired a Wizard. As much as we like it here and enjoy being here, you see where life takes you. You see how the process goes. All you do is really focus on what’s in front of you right now, to be honest. But I don’t really know or want to answer that question because that type of stuff makes Celtics fans speculate and go crazy. Especially right now, I’ll just say we’ll get there when we get there.”
That's as non-committal as it gets. The problem for Brown is that he’s immediately thrust into a no-win situation by being asked the question. He can be definitive and if something goes wrong in the negotiations … or if he just changes his mind in free agency … he’s the villain. He even implies by his answer that he wants to avoid the crazy speculation.
He could have crafted some answers to play both sides and maybe tamp down some of the speculation, but this is why I started this whole piece the way I did. Because Brown just isn’t going to give that kind of answer, even if it’s the easy way out. Part of it is because that's just his nature, and I’m sure part of it is also calculated.
Which brings me to this one:
“It’s hard coming into teams and organizations and being warm. They operate on different principles, I think. This is an organization. They look at it as a business, where they’ll tell you one thing, and then behind closed doors, they’ll say another, and they’ll trade you off,” he says. “Tell you, ‘We love you,’ and they’ll be having like, ‘We’re going to trade him next week.’ I think that’s just how business is run.”
I think it all boils down to this:
The Celtics, as an organization, have been involved in trade rumors for years that include Brown. While you and I can parse those out as demands from other teams for their available star player, Brown can internalize that as not being seen as untouchable. When Kevin Durant demanded a trade, it wasn’t about pairing Durant with Brown, it was about doing so with Tatum.
That's a lot to chew on in one’s solitude.
Brown gets the business. He’s a union rep. If I was in his shoes (I’m also a former union rep), I’d have no problems dangling some uncertainty over a franchise’s head. I’ve engaged in those kinds of negotiating tactics before, where leverage is exercised in roundabout ways.
Brown is also out-playing a below-market contract. Again, we can rationalize it from our side of the fence, but Brown doesn’t have the luxury of stepping outside himself to take our view of things. He just knows other guys are making more money than he is but not playing as well. That can’t feel good.
Boston can put all this to bed in one of two ways.
The first is offering him the super-max extension the instant they can if Brown makes an All-NBA team. In fact, I think the Celtics should already be prepping their “Vote Brown All-NBA forward” campaign.
Brown is listed as a guard, but he’s spent a significant time this season as a forward, and there seem to be more openings at that position on one of the three All-NBA teams. Brown talks about being wanted and needed, and the Celtics should be demonstrating that by going on an all-out blitz to get him voted onto one of those teams, even though it will cost them more money in salary and taxes. They need him to know that they’ll do that for him.
There are a lot of dynamics at play here, and exploring them all will turn this into a college thesis rather than a sports article (and I’m sure some of you think “sports article” is being very loosely applied to these words). All of those can be satisfied if Brown makes an All-NBA team and the Celtics are there to champion his case.
The new collective bargaining agreement can step in and do the Celtics a favor if the voters can’t. If new extension rules allow for something significantly more than a 120% raise off the final year salary, then the Celtics can probably structure a contract extension similar to what Brown would get by making All-NBA. If they can put a deal together this summer to lock him up, at similar money, then everyone can rest easy.
What no one should want is for Brown to actually enter free agency. Under the current CBA structure, he has to enter free agency in order to get his max contract. What the Celtics don’t want, though, is for Brown to start taking meetings just to see what’s out there. They don’t want him in a dimly lit room, sipping merlot, contemplating life in a different NBA city thanks to a compelling pitch.
Contemplative time alone can really be a drag, and it can really exaggerate some highs and lows. The Celtics would be better off making sure that moment doesn’t come.
Quick thoughts on some of Brown’s other quotes:
On Kyrie Irving: “Kyrie is one of those people who isn’t afraid of being wrong … He isn’t afraid of being embarrassed. He’s not afraid of big moments either, doing great things. He’s one of those people that’s special. We see him at the top of the world, and we see him make some mistakes as well. But I appreciate the fact that the fear factor for him, even though he might have been afraid, didn’t stop him from doing or saying what he felt was right, for what he felt he needed to do. And that doesn’t exist in 99 percent of people. So, people can say what they want about Kyrie Irving, but he’s definitely my friend.”
Brown kind of stepped in it with his support of Irving in the wake of Kyrie’s sharing of a movie full of antisemitic tropes.
Part of his motivation was as a union rep. In this regard, we have to be fair to Brown because he’s acting as a sort of defense attorney in that role. He questioned the length of Irving’s suspension and the parameters laid out by Nets owner Joe Tsai, who himself has waded into murky ethical territory with his business.
He never supported the movie or Irving’s stances, just like he didn’t support Kanye West’s when he didn’t immediately leave West’s Donda agency. Brown was pretty clear about sticking around to support the mission of helping the children of the academy, but West’s actions became so abhorrent that everyone involved was tainted.
Brown deserved some of that backlash because he didn’t take a strong enough stance against antisemitism. However, I don’t think any of his actions came from a hateful place, and I don’t believe Brown harbors antisemitic feelings. Again, his strong desire to buck conventional thought and not default to the status quo leads him down some roads that he probably shouldn’t be walking. Free thought and expression of nontraditional ideas is one thing, but that can quickly devolve into something sinister if left unchecked. When that happens in people we respect, like, or even love, the separation can come too slowly and our own judgment can be clouded.
What has your experience been like as a Black professional athlete in Boston?
“There’s multiple experiences: as an athlete, as a basketball player, as a regular civilian, as somebody who’s trying to start a business, as someone who’s trying to do things in the community.
There’s not a lot of room for people of color, Black entrepreneurs, to come in and start a business.
I think that my experience there has been not as fluid as I thought it would be.”
Brown shared that he has faced racism and hateful comments, especially after losses. As someone who was an early Twitter adopter, I can tell you that the vitriol has grown exponentially, and that players are certainly targets.
I’ll be brief so as not to turn this into political discourse. The following is a non-partisan statement:
Racism in Boston is real, just like it’s real across the country and the world. Brown is highlighting his experience because he wants to change it and give young Black children a better opportunity to grow up in a world free of discrimination.
When athletes do this, they're relaying personal experiences, not trying to smear a city or fan base. Brown expressly said it’s a small minority of fans that have been problematic, so no one should feel offended by him discussing his personal experience.