Jaylen Brown is still a few weeks away from putting on a 76ers jersey, but he’s already clapping back at the noise. The newest Philadelphia star responded Tuesday to a report from Fox Sports 1’s Colin Cowherd that Brown believes he’s the smartest person in any room he walks into. And he didn’t exactly hold back.
“No offense to everybody in sports, but the bar is fucking low,” Brown said during a livestream. The comment landed a day after Cowherd told listeners he’d heard from two league sources that Brown has a “disease” where he thinks he’s the smartest guy in every room. The clip picked up steam on social media and Brown wasted no time addressing it.
The whole thing feels a little early for a guy who hasn’t even played a game in Philly yet. But Brown has been doing more livestreams lately. That’s where he’s been openly talking about his mindset shift after the Celtics dealt him in a blockbuster trade that landed Boston Paul George.
“I don’t want no special treatment, I don’t want no hand-outs,” Brown said in the same stream. “I don’t want no extra privilege. Not to say y’all gonna give them anyway, but I’m planning to earn the respect one day at a time.”
That part sounds genuine. Brown won a title in Boston. He spent a decade there. And now he has to flip a switch emotionally. He admitted the Celtics literally programmed him to dislike everything about Philadelphia over the years.
“For the last 10 years, I’ve been programmed to like hate Philadelphia. I’ve been programmed to be like, ‘Man, fuck the process,’” Brown said. “I gotta like reverse engineer. That’s the part that’s going to take some time.”
The Philly fanbase is hungry. It’s been 43 years since the 76ers won an NBA championship. That kind of drought makes people desperate. And Brown is walking into a situation where he’s supposed to be part of the cure alongside Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey.
But the transition hasn’t been smooth emotionally. Brown admitted the way Boston handled his exit put him in a bad mood. He seemed genuinely wounded by the severance from the only franchise he had known. Still, he’s talking like a man who wants to prove something.
Whether he’s the smartest guy in the room doesn’t really matter. What matters is whether he can help Philly finally get over the hump. The personality stuff? That’ll sort itself out once he starts dropping 30 points at Wells Fargo Center.
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