Jaylen Brown Says He Got Snubbed From All-NBA First Team Because He Is ‘Not the Most Liked Player’: Is the Celtics Star Right?
Jaylen Brown averaged 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds and 5.1 assists this season. He led the Boston Celtics to 56 wins and the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference. He did not make the All-NBA First Team. And he has a theory why.
“I’m not the most liked player in the media,” Brown said after the All-NBA teams were announced. He landed on the All-NBA Second Team, behind a First Team featuring Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokic, Victor Wembanyama, Luka Doncic and Cade Cunningham.
The implication was loud and the implication was clear. Brown believes voters held something against him that had nothing to do with basketball.
The Case That Brown Has a Point
Brown’s numbers were career bests across the board. He had the best individual season of any wing in the Eastern Conference. His Celtics finished as the No. 2 seed and were one of the top defensive teams in the league. He played all 82 games. He carried a Boston team that lost Jayson Tatum to injury for stretches.
The All-NBA voting process is done by a media panel of roughly 100 voters. Players cannot vote. There is no transparency on individual ballots. If a critical mass of writers and broadcasters decided Brown’s public image, his comments about analytics, his Twitter feuds, his ongoing personal brand pursuits hurt him, there would be no way to prove it.
That is the universe Brown is pointing at. He has been vocal about feeling under-appreciated for years. The 2024 Finals MVP did not silence the noise. It actually made some of it louder.
The Case That Brown Is Wrong
Cade Cunningham had a monster year. He averaged 27.1 points, 9.0 assists and led the Pistons to their first playoff series win in a generation. Doncic and Jokic and SGA are obvious picks. Wembanyama is the future of the sport. The First Team is loaded for reasons that have nothing to do with Brown.
The fifth spot was the only one in real debate. Brown was up against Cunningham, Anthony Edwards and Donovan Mitchell. Voters had to slice hairs. Cunningham winning that hair was not a referendum on Brown’s character. It was a vote for a guard who put together the best individual season of his career.
What Brown’s Comments Mean Going Forward
Brown is under contract with Boston through 2029 on a super-max deal. He is not going anywhere. But the All-NBA bonuses tied to those contracts are massive, and Brown will lose out on millions because of the Second Team placement.
That is the real reason this stings. Beyond the recognition, beyond the legacy talk, the All-NBA First Team triggers a specific contract bonus that Brown will not get. He has every right to be upset about it.
His teammate Derrick White already went public saying the result was hard to believe. The Celtics front office knows the math too. The question is whether Brown lets this fuel another deep run in 2027, or whether the resentment becomes a story that follows him through every press conference for the next 12 months.
The Celtics need the first version. They probably do not need much more material to motivate them.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
