The Team USA Men’s Basketball team is certainly not lacking for star power or talent, with players like LeBron James, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant and Jayson Tatum being just a few of the names on the high-caliber roster.
One name in particular that hasn’t been added to the roster however is Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum’s longtime teammate on the 2024 NBA Finals Championship-winning Boston Celtics squad. Brown was such a deciding presence in the Celtics’ 4-1 series win over the Dallas Mavericks that he was voted the 2024 NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award.
The exclusion of Brown comes as a surprise to a number of basketball fans and analysts alike and was only exacerbated when Brown was not listed as a replacement for the Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard when he had to withdraw from the Team USA Men’s squad due to injury — and Celtics teammate Derrick White was instead.
Brown posted some cryptic messages on Twitter/X as a result of being disregarded for the Team USA Men’s Basketball team, including one stating, β@nike this what we doing?β and later, βIβm not afraid of you or your resources,” leading many to believe (and later something that Brown himself contended) that the omission was a result of some of Brown’s past criticism of the athletic footwear and apparel corporation on social media (including one tweet which asked βSince when did Nike care about ethics?β after Nike cut ties with former Celtics teammate and current Mavericks guard Kyrie Irving). Nike is a major sponsor of multiple US teams at the 2024 Olympics, including the Team USA Men’s Basketball team, one example being the supply of team uniforms.
Other (more outlandish) theories, including analysts like Stephen A. Smith on ESPN, contended that Tatum didn’t want to play alongside Brown again after winning the 2024 Championship with him for personal reasons possibly stemming from jealousy.
Sports writer Bill Simmons however has his own explanation and contends that Jaylen Brown not being added to Team USA makes sense as well.
“You don’t really have minutes for Jaylen Brown, who just won the Finals MVP,” said on a recent episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast. “He was just on a title team, and now you’re going to add him to this team last minute because Kawhi gets shut down, and he’s not going to play, and that’s gonna go good from a chemistry standpoint? It’s not.”
As for why Derrick White was added to Team USA and Brown wasn’t, Simmons explained, “The White pick was a chemistry pick; that’s it. White’s not gonna care if he doesn’t play or not. Jaylen Brown not playing is a little bit different. It’s a little bit embarrassing. He probably thinks he’s on the same level as KD (Kevin Durant) and [Jayson] Tatum and LeBron [James] at this point, and he might not be wrong. But to me, it made sense not to have him because it brings up all the chemistry stuff that you wanna avoid.”
Do you think Bill Simmons is right in his belief that Jaylen Brown not being added to Team USA makes sense? Let us know in the comments.
