Jaylen Brown, An Adidas Athlete, Seemingly Blames Nike For Not Being Selected To Olympics Team

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Three Boston Celtics players are on the United States Men’s Basketball National Team roster that’s headed to France for the 2024 Summer Olympics this summer, and none of them are the one who recently won NBA Finals MVP: Jaylen Brown.

While Jayson Tatum and Jrue Holiday were both on the initial roster, guard Derrick White was recently added to the team following the departure of Los Angeles Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard, a move that clearly aggravated the 27-year-old Brown.

Brown, who is sponsored by adidas, seemed to blame Nike for the snub as he tweeted at the company saying “This what we doing?”

This season, Brown’s eighth in the league, he set career highs in games started, field goal percentage (49%), assists per game (3.6), and steals per game (1.2), while averaging 23 points and 5.5 rebounds per game.

The Team USA roster headed to Paris includes LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Joel Embiid, Devin Booker, Jayson Tatum, Anthony Davis, Tyrese Haliburton, Anthony Edwards, Jrue Holiday, Bam Adebayo, and Derrick White.

Grant Hill, the managing director of USA Basketball — which is sponsored by Nike — was asked about Brown’s tweets on Wednesday night.

“For a good portion of my career, I wore Fila. That was supposed to be a joke. We’re proud of our partners, obviously. … This is about putting together a team,” Hill told reporters following Team USA’s 86-72 win over Canada in a warm-up exhibition game in Las Vegas.

In the 2024 NBA Finals, which the Celtics won in 5 games over Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving and the Dallas Mavericks, Brown averaged 20.8 points, 5.4 rebounds, and 5.0 assists per game en route to winning the Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award.