MILWAUKEE — Jaylen Brown was busy Sunday worrying about, and balling on, the Milwaukee Bucks.
He was out there on the court in Game 1 of an Eastern Conference semifinal, wearing the same Celtics jersey as All-Star Kyrie Irving and dunking on Bucks MVP candidate Giannis Antetokounmpo. Brown was scoring 19 points and helping Boston to an easy, 112-90 win.
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And while all of this was going on, someone found a Tweet from five years ago to the day, sent by 17-year-old Jaylen Brown, who was a senior at Joseph Wheeler High School in Marietta, Ga. In that Tweet, the child Brown said his teacher told him that she’d be able to find him at the local jail in, yes, five years’ time.
My teacher said she will look me up in the Cobb county jail in 5 years .. Wow
— Jaylen Brown (@FCHWPO) April 28, 2014
The Tweet went viral during Sunday’s game (ESPN’s Twitter account picked it up), and, well, it turned out to be a bad take by the teacher. Literally five years later, there’s Brown, a millionaire, a former Cal-Berkeley student, who of course never spent a minute behind bars, playing for basketball’s most historic franchise and kicking ass.
“You don’t really forget instances like that,” Brown told The Athletic after Game 1. “You use it as fuel and you move on.”
There is so much nuance and quite a bit of ambiguity to this story, though. Brown still won’t disclose the teacher’s name, or even spit it out as to exactly what happened that day, though he gave The Athletic some clues.
He said on Sunday that he took to Twitter five years ago as a kid who was “in shock” and “surprised” a teacher said what she said, but, “I didn’t think anybody was going to see it.”
Now that the Internet found the Tweet, and the NBA universe did see it, he wants you to know, he doesn’t necessarily blame the teacher for what was said.
“Sometimes because the education system is poor, especially in Georgia, sometimes teachers have too many kids and not enough help,” Brown said. “I’m not blaming the one teacher.”
Asked if he was glad his Tweet from yesteryear went viral, if for no other reason than he has a platform, and there are children who come from poor school districts and face bleak futures, he said yes, “in a way.”
“If it’s used as an example to motivate kids all around the world, especially growing up in a public school in the metro Atlanta area, everything isn’t always cut and dry,” Brown said. “It’s tough, it’s tough on both sides. Teachers, students as well, to learn in an environment and also teach in an environment with 30-something kids in one class. That’s hard.”
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As for what happened that day, five years ago, when an exchange with a teacher led to Brown being told he’d wind up in jail, Brown suggested “I could have been smart at the mouth.” He said “I’ve made leaps and bounds from what you see today from where I was in high school — I’ve grown mentally, spiritually, emotionally,” which is interesting, given that it’s been documented he chose Cal over other basketball schools because of the cultural opportunity, played chess against older adults while he was there, and took graduate-level courses.
“The teacher felt some type of way,” Brown said. “I was in shock. I don’t think that merited somebody saying that to me, and I was surprised that somebody said that to me. I was very surprised. It caught me off guard. I was in amazement that somebody said that, so I tweeted it. I wasn’t trying to bring attention to it.”
Brown said the incident was dealt with by school administrators and his basketball team, which he led to a Georgia state championship that season. The 6-7 forward went to Cal for one year, was drafted by the Celtics third overall, and has been in the playoffs in each of his three NBA campaigns. The last two ended in losses to LeBron James and the Cavs in the Eastern finals. Neither LeBron nor Cleveland is even in the tournament this year.
Brown and the Celtics are, though, and they’re playing their best basketball of the season. Which is why Brown would rather move forward than look back.
“I’m happy to be in the position I’m in today. I’m blessed,” he said. “It’s definitely something that you don’t forget. You use it as fuel. But it’s a part of the journey. I’m in high school, things happen.”
(Top photo: Morry Gash/AP)
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