Jaylen Brown on Danny Ainge pushing back on calling sports a mechanism for control

Jaylen Brown has been one of the most outspoken players in the NBA, and he did not need to settle into the league before finding his voice. In fact, the Georgia native was making waves in a good way even in his rookie season with the Boston Celtics. The then-19-year-old Brown did an interview caught the attention of the Celtics President of Basketball Operations at the time, Danny Ainge, for speaking to one aspect of how sports can function in society. In a recent interview with the folks behind the NBPA "State of the Game" podcast, Brown explained how his rookie self raised eyebrows even within Boston's front office with his heady take on sports. "I was in Boston, and I’m thinking I’m talking to a normal beat writer," he recalled. "It happened to be this big writer for The Guardian. And this dude put me on the cover of The Guardian newspaper saying, ‘Jaylen Brown says sports is a mechanism for control.’" "That’s when I was 19 years old," added Brown. "Then that went viral. That’s when I got invited to Harvard to go speak about it. So Harvard invited me, based on that article in The Guardian, to come speak about it. That’s why I became the youngest Harvard lecturer."