Celtics guard Jaylen Brown is one of the most interesting men in the NBA.
At 27, Brown has earned three All-Star nods, and after an All-NBA selection in 2023, he became the recipient of the league's first-ever $300 million contract. Impressive as his accolades on the court are, Brown is an even more intriguing person off of it.
Before joining the NBA, Brown's intelligence and off-the-court interests were a major part of the pre-draft discourse. In the eight years since, those interests have grown as Brown has, adding to his standing as one of the league's brilliant minds.
How smart is Jaylen Brown? Here's why the Celtics star's brilliance is revered by many.
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How smart is Jaylen Brown?
Brown is a product of a background that includes a family of educators. Brown's mother, Mechalle, earned her PhD and doctorate from the University of Michigan
In a 2019 feature with Boston.com, Brown explained that during his formative years, his mother and grandmother would urge him to write book reports instead of constantly watching basketball and playing video games.
With a strong educational background, Brown took honors classes at Wheeler High School in Marietta, Ga., where he blossomed into a McDonald's All-American on the court.
Given his basketball stardom, Brown had an array of Division 1 colleges to choose from during his recruitment. With academics in mind, Brown pledged to play at the University of California-Berkeley, a prestigious institution that's nearly 2,500 miles away from his Georgia home
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College education
Like many college athletes, Brown enrolled at Cal during the summer ahead of his freshman year. He immediately began his foray into higher education with a six-week bridge program that he admits was difficult but allowed him to understand what would be expected of him in college.
As a freshman at Berkeley, Brown enrolled in a master's-level course in the school's Cultural Studies of Sport in Education program. While balancing the workload of a master's-level course, Brown's play on the court earned him Pac-12 Freshman of the Year honors.
In addition to his basketball endeavors, Brown's extracurricular activities also included membership in the school's chess club.
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Professional endeavors
Brown spent just one year at Cal-Berkeley but made his impact felt, developing a reputation for his intelligence and inquisitive nature. Ahead of the 2016 draft, ESPN's Andscape described Brown as the NBA Draft's Renaissance man, citing his intriguing personality.
"He is a person who is inquisitive about everything," an NBA executive told Andscape. "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"
Among Brown's most notable choices was his decision to not hire an agent given his understanding that NBA contracts were pro-rated based on draft position. Brown instead relied on a team of advisors that includes Basketball Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas and another California alum, Shareef Abdur-Rahim.
Since joining the Celtics in 2016, Brown became the youngest person to deliver a lecture at Harvard, the youngest person to be elected as a VP of the NBA Players Association, and has delivered a TED Talk at MIT.
Brown's motto of FCHWPO, "Faith, Consistency, Hard Work Pays Off" doubles as his social media handles, and he has a number of endeavors that connect him with the community.
Brown's 7uice Foundation partners with institutions, organizations, and social change leaders to bridge the opportunity gap for youth in traditionally underserved Black and Brown communities. Upon receiving his $303.7 million contract in 2023, Brown had this to say about his impact on the community:
There's analytics that support that stimulating the wealth gap is something that could be a betterment for the entire economy. With the biggest financial deal in NBA history, it makes sense to talk about one, your investment in community. But two, also the wealth disparity [in Boston] that nobody wants to talk about. ... It's something we can all improve on."
Brown has already used his intelligence to make an incredible impact just eight years into his NBA career. He'll continue to build on that as he grows as a person — and a star.
