Brad Stevens responds to Jaylen Brown's Team USA snub, Celtics team sale
BOSTON -- While the Celtics won the franchise's 18th NBA Championship just over a month ago, the team has had to navigate some choppy waters this offseason. If the team going up for sale wasn't a big enough storyline, Jaylen Brown's Team USA snub has kept the Celtics in the headlines this summer.
It was just over a week ago that Brown was passed over to replace an injured Kawhi Leonard on the Team USA roster for the Paris Olympics. Despite Brown coming off a career season and earning MVP honors in both the Eastern Conference Finals and NBA Finals, the powers that be went with his Celtics teammate Derrick White to take Leonard's spot.
Brown expressed frustration over the snub and took aim at Nike, which didn't paint him in a particularly positive light as it overshadowed White's honor. Brown has since said that he reached out to White, but he's still pretty upset that he won't be playing in Paris this summer.
Celtics President of Basketball Ops. Brad Stevens understands Brown's frustration, and responded to his snub Wednesday from the Las Vegas Summer League.
"Jaylen's a great player. I don't think there's any doubt that Jaylen could be on any team – could be on any Olympic team in any year," Stevens told reporters, via CLNS Media.
Stevens has had a front-row seat for Brown's entire career, first as his head coach for the first four years and then as the head honcho of the C's for the last three seasons. He's watched him develop into the star that he is today, and knows that Brown is going to use the snub to motivate him as the Celtics look to go back-to-back in 2024-25.
"I know this about Jaylen: whether he has success and gets all the accolades like Finals MVP or Eastern Conference Finals MVP, or if he feels like he got left off a team, I know he's going to be motivated and hungry regardless," said Stevens. "That's what I've always loved about him. He always comes back to work."
Stevens also reacted to the Celtics going up for sale for the first time since Wyc Grousbeck made the announcement in the days following the team's championship parade. He was just as surprised as everyone else, but doesn't believe it will impact his job as team president in the immediate future.
"I learned not long before everybody else did that was going to happen," he said. "I'm obviously very thankful for Wyc and his family and everything they've done. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens from here.
"I don't want to get too far into the weeds of it all, but how does it affect us? It doesn't really right now," Stevens added. "We're just head down, doing what we think is best for the now of the Celtics and the future."