Jaylen Brown has gotten a lot of jet fuel from his nobody respects me act. More power to him. He’s an elite basketball player, who has been underestimated at a lot of stops along the way and proven a lot of people wrong.
The Celtics star had as good a case as anyone to be on Team USA for the 2024 Olympics already and certainly would have been a good fit as a replacement for Kawhi Leonard. Feeling overlooked is justified.
But as soon as Derrick White was even rumored to be Leonard’s likely replacement, Brown should have shut up. Brown should understand why more than anyone. For years he’s railed against people trying to manufacture some sort of nonexistent rift between himself and Jayson Tatum and then he stepped in a pothole of his own creation with faux-clever social media posts targeting USA Basketball and Nike.
If it was Damian Lillard or Jalen Brunson, who got Leonard’s spot, Brown could have griped all he wanted. It wouldn’t have been especially classy, but it would have at least added a little spice to the rivalry with the Bucks or Knicks, which would have been fun and good for the NBA. If he did it when the full squad was initially announced. That would have worked too.
But when a fellow Celtic is the collateral damage, it’s just poor form.
If all the platitudes about team, brotherhood and unity that the Celtics spent a lot of time talking about were genuine, then Brown should know better than to complain publicly. He made what should have been a moment of a lifetime for White into an anti-moment for himself.
In a relatively dead period in the sports calendar, instead of talking about White’s inspirational rise from overlooked, underrecruited Division II college player to being invited to join one of the best rosters in history, TV talking heads are instead debating whether Brown was snubbed.
And even if he was, letting his own petulance detract from Derrick White is wildly selfish. Behind closed doors in private offices at USA Basketball, they’re probably looking at Brown’s performative pouting as evidence they were right not to choose him.
Brown was the highest-paid player in the NBA last season and won both the Eastern Conference Most Valuable Player and NBA Finals MVP honors. The Rodney Dangerfield act isn’t going to play anymore. He gets plenty of respect and plenty of money.
He’d have gotten plenty of admiration inside and outside his own locker room too if he’d gone to social media and praised and congratulated White when he was chosen instead of stealing his moment.
Will this create a crack in Celtics’ chemistry as they try to repeat? If White, who is both laid back and mature, chooses to ignore Brown’s angsty teenager stunt and just enjoy and grow from his Olympics experience it will probably blow over. And Brown, who is running out of slights to be motivated by, might get some added juice that helps fuel a run at a repeat.
But if the team hits other adversity somewhere down the line, this is unlikely to be forgotten.
Being a great player, a true alpha, is about more than just basketball skill. Brown still has that step to take.
His issue is not with the Celtics. It’s with the Olympic committee so this will only fuel him to be even better