CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As a crowd of high school kids dressed in neon pink surrounded the dais, the man of the hour was missing. The students from Jaylen Brown’s 7uice Foundation Bridge program at MIT formed a colorful backdrop behind Olympic medalist and civil rights icon John Carlos, but he had no interest in speaking alone and scanned the audience for the Celtics star.
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“Can you come up here Mr. Brown?” Carlos asked. “The reason I called Mr. Brown over here and had you guys come over here, it’s just ironic that we’re talking about living to make history. Well, Mr. Brown right now is here in the forefront, the apex of the triangle, to make history.”
Then Brown took a seat, signed his five-year, $304 million extension with the students alongside him, and made history by inking what will be the biggest contract in NBA history for now. After the applause from the room died down, Brown chanted, “The world is,” as the students responded in unison, “Mine!”
Always better when you can share special moments 💚 pic.twitter.com/bfOt6KdzBr
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) July 27, 2023
Players talk about giving back once they’ve earned their millions, showing up for a couple of hours to connect with a few kids and take some pictures. But Brown is fully embedded, even building his press conference into the middle of a packed schedule at his foundation’s program at the MIT Media Lab that organized a multi-day camp for Black and Brown Boston high school students.
After he got the call the deal was done earlier this week, he said he put his phone away and stepped back into their robotics seminar that was already in session. When it was time for a news conference, they didn’t follow convention by hosting it at the practice facility behind closed doors. This moment was going to be shared with his students, so they could see firsthand how hard work pays off.
“I think we probably would’ve all liked to get the deal done a little bit earlier, but this is the day it fell on, and I knew I was going to be here, spending most of my time. So I thought it was fitting,” said Brown. “But what more beautiful place than being in an environment with youth, to be in an environment for learning that’s supposed to be cutting edge and make the world a better place, and I think that’s what we’re all in the business of besides entertainment. So for it to be here, I think was just divine timing. And now, as we are putting the pen to paper, we’ve got a lot of work to do, and I think we’re all on that same journey: to make this place, the community that we all live in better. We all have that responsibility.”
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Extension talks dragged on for weeks, with the two sides landing on a fully guaranteed supermax deal. Brown didn’t get the player option, but he secured a trade kicker that will be the lesser of seven percent of unearned base compensation or $7 million, according to a league source who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record. Brown will also receive a salary advance each year of $7,777,777, per the source.
The hope is the trade kicker won’t matter. The Celtics committed this money to Brown knowing they’re about to do the same with Jayson Tatum in a year. They’ll be in the supertax by the time this deal kicks in, and locked into the pairing of the Jays for the immediate future. While championships will define whether this pairing and this team stay together, Celtics leadership made it clear Wednesday that they want to be partners in Brown’s ambitions off the court.
“It’s not just about a contract or money or playing basketball. It’s about making a difference in life,” Celtics governor Wyc Grousbeck said. “And that’s what Jaylen embodies to me and to my partner Steve (Pagliuca) and to all of us here at the Celtics. He’s a true Celtic. He’s a Celtic for years to come. We live and burn with a desire to make the world a better place, and as well, not to be forgotten, to win banner 18.”
Grousbeck elaborated on how when the negotiating parties gathered to finalize the contract on Sunday, they spent most of the time talking about how they take inspiration from Bill Russell. It’s been apparent throughout his career that Brown has sought to follow in his footsteps, maximizing his platform as an NBA star to persistently shine a light on the issues that matter most.
“For me to be able to go out there every single night and play, but also represent causes and things that I stand for in the community, represent being a voice for the voiceless; to me it gives my life and my meaning so much more purpose,” said Brown. “I’m excited to represent this city, this organization. I’m excited to play. I’m excited to walk in the lights of people like John Carlos, who’s here, people like Bill Russell, etc., who have paved the way for athletes just in general to be able to have platforms. I think life is changing, the world is changing. And I’m proud to be a part of that change.”
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This isn’t the first time Brown has made life-changing money. But by the time this upcoming extension is paid out, he will have earned over $400 million in his career, with potentially another contract even bigger than that waiting for him in 2029. That money might be too much for one person to spend, so his first thought wasn’t about a mansion or a Maybach.
“The first thing that came to mind is like ‘Dang, look what all you can do with it now,’” Brown said. “Like how much you can invest into your community, what you can build with it, what you can change, how many lives you can touch, and what you can do in real-time.”
The first order of business he proposed Wednesday was to attack the socioeconomic stratification in the city.
“I want to launch a project to bring Black Wall Street here to Boston. I want to attack the wealth disparity here,” Brown said. “I think there’s analytics that supports that stimulating the wealth gap could actually be something that could be for the betterment of the entire economy. With the biggest financial deal in NBA history, it makes sense to talk about money invested in the community, but also the wealth disparity here that nobody wants to talk about. It’s top five in the U.S. It’s something that we can all improve on. It’s unsettling.”
When Carlos introduced Brown, he told the kids this could be a moment of not just local or national history, but across the globe. As Brown dived into his plan to close the wealth gap in Boston, he envisioned making the city a pilot program for the rest of the world.
Later this summer, he’ll bring the Bridge program to Kenya. When Brown said he wants to do something, the track record looks good. While his aspirations are beyond ambitious, he’s trying to make it happen and has the tools to do so.
So on the day that he secured the kind of wealth that enables him to think even bigger, the pressure he felt wasn’t to win a championship. It was to build a tangible impact.
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“Money isn’t everything, but the ability to have resources, to put stuff together, to build things, to change things, to have influence, all of that stuff is more inspirational to me than anything,” Brown said. “So now the pressure is like, now I have to build something fitting, something monumental, to reach up to make sense for that astronomical number. But I’m excited to do so.”
(Top photo: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
Jared Weiss is a staff writer covering the Boston Celtics and NBA for The Athletic. He has covered the Celtics since 2011, co-founding CLNS Media Network while in college before covering the team for SB Nation's CelticsBlog and USA Today. Before coming to The Athletic, Weiss spent a decade working for the government, primarily as a compliance bank regulator. Follow Jared on Twitter @JaredWeissNBA
