About a week ago, the Boston Celtics traded Jaylen Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers for Paul George and multiple first and second-round picks.
As the NBA world reeled from the shocking trade, speculations about why the Celtics made that move reverberated. One prominent sports talk show host said Boston sent Brown packing because the five-time All-Star was too smart for his own good.
On Tuesday, Draymond Green, on “The Draymond Green Show,” pushed back against that criticism.
Draymond Green Shuts Down Growing Narrative About Jaylen Brown
After news broke that the Celtics swapped Brown for George and picks, Colin Cowherd made a comment that has polarized the NBA community.
“The Herd with Colin Cowherd” host said that according to his sources, Brown thought “he’s the smartest guy in every room he’s in.” Cowherd added that the way the 2024 NBA Finals MVP looked at himself was a “disease.”
Green, in a chat with journalist Jemele Hill, responded to that take from Cowherd.
“The Jaylen Brown thing, it really sent me for a loop. … I’m just, like, all of a sudden, a guy being smart is an issue?! I think I’m a pretty smart individual. I think I got a pretty decent head on my shoulders. Jaylen Brown is brilliant,” Green said.
“I don’t pretend to be that smart. I don’t want anybody to think I think I’m that smart, but he is! Like, he actually is that smart. And when I say smart, right, like as you know, there’s book smarts, there’s street smarts, there’s so many different types of smarts… But the smart that Jaylen Brown is, he’s book smart. He’s street smart. The things that he knows and that he understands,” he continued.
On Thursday, Brown responded to that comment while interacting with his supporters on Twitch.
“I’m tired of these damn anonymous sources, like anonymous executive, anonymous source, Colin Cowherd, Bobby Marks, Stephen A. Smith. Anonymous sources is saying anything. I think y’all are the sources,” Brown countered.
Brown’s intelligence has been well documented. Heading into the 2016 NBA draft, NBA insider Marc J. Spears reported a comment from an unnamed NBA assistant general manager.
“He is an extremely intelligent kid. He took a graduate school class at Cal in his freshman year. He is a person who is inquisitive about everything. Because he is so smart, it might be intimidating to some teams. He wants to know why you are doing something instead of just doing it. I don’t think it’s bad, but it’s a form of questioning authority,” the anonymous NBA executive said.
The two-time All-NBA guard also once lectured at Harvard and delivered a talk at MIT during a TEDxBeaconStreet event in 2019.
If Cowherd’s sources were right, Brown might have rubbed people the wrong way.
However, according to Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens, the Brown trade had nothing to do with such narratives. Boston’s top executive made the difficult move because he said that the team needed flexibility and “optionality” with the roster and the salary cap.
