MILWAUKEE -- The internet always keeps receipts.
When Jaylen Brown tweeted this out five years ago Sunday, someone, somewhere, made note of the five year window, and brought it back to the surface.
“I wasn’t trying to draw any attention to myself. I had no idea this would turn out to be what it was,” Brown said before the team’s practice Monday in Milwaukee. “It got a lot of attention. If kids look at it the right way in terms of somebody ever said anything that tried to put them down or shoot their dreams down and motivated them to get where they are, I salute that. But I had no intention of it becoming a thing.”
Intentional or not, it did become a thing. It’s a sentiment Brown has carried with him for all five years, but he’s not angry about it.
“When somebody says something like that, you never really forget it. Something like that you hang onto,” Brown said. “I don’t really want to get into what happened, because I’m going to leave it in the past where it belongs, but it’s true. In Georgia, our education system isn’t the best so I don’t put too much blame on teachers. It is what it is. But one teacher handling 35 kids in one class it’s tough. There’s a lot of teachers who go through stuff and take a lot of crap all day, so who knows what was going through her mind that day when she said that. But I will let it be in the past. I will use it as motivation.”
Athletes draw motivation from anywhere they can, but this goes a little beyond the typical bulletin board material. Brown says the school dealt with it at the time and he’s moved on, but being told something like that can hurt a young man on many levels.
“Stuff like that adds fuel to the fire, and then when it resurfaces it adds more fuel to the fire,” Brown said. “But it’s in the past. I don’t even look at it as a negative, you know what I mean? Or looking to give it back to the teacher. I’m just trying to be the best version of myself.”
Ultimately, Brown has the last laugh.
“I’ll leave in the past where it belongs but it’s definitely a really cool moment to be where I am now,” he said. “Five years ago who would’ve thought? Especially where I come from and a lot of people come from and a lot of people come from communities worse or better. Everybody has aspirations and dreams to get to where they belong and I’m happy I am here playing basketball with the Celtics.”