Jaylen Brown, the story of the star “too smart for the NBA” who wants to lead Boston to the ring record

“His greatest impact, even though he is a magnificent player, is not what he generates on the court, but off it. And that’s one of the things I like most about him. He cares about what is right. He is going to express his opinion. And if he doesn’t know something, he will learn it.” This is how Brad Stevens, president of operations at Boston Celtics, a Jaylen Brown, one of the main figures of the franchise that took a 2-0 lead in the NBA Finals against Dallas Mavericks and is looking for his 18th ring to remain alone as the top winner – today he is tied at 17 with the Los Angeles Lakers.

Brown, Eastern Conference Finals MVP in which the Celtics swept 4-0 Indiana Pacers, was born on October 24, 1996 in Marietta, a city of 60 thousand inhabitants located in the north of the state of Georgia, and from its beginnings he was noted as one of the best players of his generation. And he ended up becoming a superstar. However, the way he approaches this sport and the journey he went through to reach the elite differentiate him from other great talents who shone in the American league.

“Basketball is not what you are, but what you do“, his mother, Mechalle, repeated over and over again. Together with her father, Marselles, a boxer who became a two-time champion in the heavyweight category of the World Boxing Union, they stressed the importance of studying. And that message resonated deeply. Beyond the fact that the projections placed little Jaylen as a promise with a glorious destiny, there are many imponderables – injuries, for example – that can change the course of a career and that is why his parents wanted him to prepare to have a plan. B, C or D.

So it was noted in the Wheeler High School from his hometown, where he could play and study at the same time. There he won the Georgia High School Association state championship in his first year. senior showing signs of that mental coldness, forcefulness and consistency that would later take him to the top. He made two decisive free throws with seven tenths remaining in the final quarter of the final and averaged 28 points and 13 rebounds throughout the season. His team closed that campaign with an impressive record of 30 wins and only three losses.

The years went by and it was increasingly evident that he was going to reach and shine at the highest level, but that never moved his focus from his studies. In his first semester at University of California, Berkeley, He studied chemistry and even asked Derek Van Rheenen, a professor there, to attend his class to take a subject that was aimed solely at students of the Master of Cultural Studies in Sports Education. In addition, he speaks different languages ​​fluently, including Spanish, and studied History and Philosophy.

“For me and my family, education is something fundamental,” was explained.

He did not want his natural talent and favorable physical conditions to excel in sports to be detrimental to his intellectual development, which he identified as a serious problem that affected many children around the world. For this reason, he trained himself and even wrote an essay on the subject.

Jaylen Brown is not only a great basketball player, one of the best in the world today, but a person with a wide background of knowledge and interested in topics that go far beyond his ability to attack the paint or his speed of movement. hands to hide the ball and thus break solid defenses.

“It’s still common to hear comments like ‘shut up, you’re just a basketball player’ whenever a player expresses their opinion about, for example, Donald Trump. I want to help change that,” he questioned at the time.

He also became involved in racial struggles. For example, in 2020 he drove 15 hours from Boston to Atlanta to participate in one of the many demonstrations protesting the death of George Floyd, the African-American man who was choked to death by police officer Dereck Chauvin in Powderhorn, Minneapolis. Images of Brown holding up a sign with Floyd’s last words went viral, the ones he spoke while Chauvin pressed his knee on his neck: “I can’t breath (I can’t breathe)

And he went deeper into the topic. “I want to launch a project to make a black Wall Street in Boston, I want to attack the wealth disparity. That’s something no one wants to talk about. “We can unite with government officials to create new jobs, new businesses targeting minorities,” he said at the press conference after the renewal of his relationship with the Celtics was announced. five years in exchange for $304 million, the highest contract in NBA history by exceeding 270 million Nikola Jokic con Denver Nuggets.

So in 2019, after being named as a member of the prestigious MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Media Lab, he collaborated to create the Bridge Program, which mentors interested young black men and high school students in Boston. ​in pursuing careers in STEM programs. These are educational programs included in an acronym: science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Along the same lines, his move from Wheeler High School to the University of Berkeley, although it would end up being the previous step to reaching the NBA, was not inspired by a sports motivation, but by values ​​far removed from sports. He could play at Kentucky, UCLA, Kansas, North Carolina and Michigan, but he opted for the city where Martin Luther King He gave a memorable speech in the middle of the Vietnam War, on May 17, 1967, in which he sent a message of peace to North American society and sought to promote good coexistence between whites and blacks.

Those were the words of an NBA General Manager prior to his arrival in the American league. “He Questions everything. In addition to doing something, you’ll want to know why you have to do it. He is like that, although some believe that with that attitude he is questioning authority. Not everyone is going to like it: there are certain coaches of the Old School that they don’t want to be questioned,” he explained.

At Berkeley, Brown played chess, a passion he inherited from his grandfather. He excelled as part of the university’s Varsity Chess team. “Chess is a bit like life. All your decisions are made thinking about the future and its consequences,” commented on it. Additionally, he plays the piano and guitar.

At the same time, he continued with his sports career and did not neglect it at any time. He was the third pick of the Draft in 2016 for Boston Celtics, behind Ben Simmons (Philadelphia 76ers) and Brandon Ingram (Los Angeles Lakers). In the middle, a new sign that there is much more to him than a first-class basketball player: in 2019, at 22 years old, He was the youngest vice president of the NBA Players Association in history.

Now he will seek to close the circle with his first ring, although that will never be the most important thing in his life.