ATLANTA — In 2014, a substitute teacher at Wheeler High School told Jaylen Brown that she expected him to end up at the Cobb County jail.
Almost 12 years later, on a chilly Friday morning, Brown saw his
high school jersey retired as part of a special Martin Luther King Jr. ceremony at that very school in Marietta, Georgia.
At shootaround, ahead of the Boston Celtics’ Saturday night game against the Atlanta Hawks, Brown recalled that now-infamous altercation with his former teacher.
“I remember like it was yesterday,” he said with a smile.
Brown, who was 17 years old at the time and one of the country’s top basketball prospects, had just returned from an elite Nike basketball camp and was flooded with questions from excited classmates. He was already one of the best athletes to ever come out of his hometown, and the hype was mounting.
“I was kind of distracting the class, not intentionally — but all the kids wanted to ask me questions and stuff at the time,” Brown said. “I was a kid as well, but it was kind of distracting to the class. And the teacher was just trying to get the class organized, so she made a comment.”
That comment was cutting in nature, and it’s one that stuck with Brown forever. It’s also one that has made the rounds on social media plenty of times throughout the year.
“She made a comment like, ‘If Jaylen doesn’t do his work, I don’t care what camp he went to….he’s not gonna be successful if he doesn’t pay attention to class,” Brown said. “‘I might have said something back, like, ‘Whether I pay attention to class or not, I’m gonna make it.’ She was like, ‘Well, let’s see. I’ll see you in the Cobb County Jail.”
Almost immediately, Brown turned to social media to share his teacher’s remark. That set off a ripple effect at the school: “The student administrator came and got me out of class, and was like, ‘We need to talk about this.’”
Immediately, he made clear he didn’t want the situation to escalate: “I was like, ‘No big deal.’”
Jaylen Brown recalls the now-viral incident with empathy
Needless to say, the Wheeler High School substitute was way off base in her prediction. Five years later, Brown was nowhere to be found in the Cobb County Jail; instead, he was on the brink of NBA stardom.
Still, the Celtics star holds no resentment for his former teacher — and made clear that he understands she was likely in a difficult position that day.
“I empathize with teachers,” Brown said. “Because the reality is you have a class that’s probably got too many students in it, and their job is to not only teach the class, but also keep a group of 30 students behaved, or more, that come from backgrounds that maybe lack resources, they have problems at home, maybe, so they have other issues that they’re probably dealing with at the same time. I empathize with the teachers because they don’t get paid enough to deal with some of the stuff that goes on.”
On Friday, Brown returned to Wheeler High School as a hero in a ceremony that was livestreamed on his Twitch channel.
Today, Brown has four All-Star appearances, a Finals MVP, and a championship under his belt. He shared words of wisdom with his alma mater’s students and relished in the special moment.
That one instance does not represent how everyone in Marietta, Georgia, perceived Brown at the time. He was a great student who scored well on exams and loved math and science, and there were plenty of people who did believe in him growing up.
“But also, I went to a public school,” Brown said. “So, the reality is that a lot of those kids don’t have the opportunity or the resources to reach the same level of success — the opportunities are limited. Only a certain amount of students are going to university. A certain amount of students are going to community college; the opportunities dwindle depending on the zip codes that you come from.”
Today, Jaylen Brown prioritizes education through his philanthropic work
Brown now sits on the other side of the education system — rather than being a student, he’s emerged as a philanthropist who puts his time and money into the education system.
Through his 7uice Foundation, he’s long led an annual education camp at MIT for underserved students in the Boston area. He’s guest-lectured at Harvard, and he supports aspiring entrepreneurs through his Boston XChange program.
That one tumultuous afternoon is now a distant memory, and Brown holds no resentment for his former teacher.
“Maybe I could have been more respectful, in a sense,” he said. “But it was just one of those things where the students were just excited to hear about some of the stuff that was going on for me — I couldn’t really control that.”
Still, it’s one of many moments that have long motivated him.
“I did use it as fuel for the next 10 years,” Brown said. “And here we are.”
