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Boston Celtics superstar Jaylen Brown does not have a very good relationship with Nike, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon after the sportswear giant trolled Brown on Twitter on Wednesday.
The tweet in question came after Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is a Nike-sponsored athlete, scored 59 points in a win over the Detroit Pistons. Over the weekend, Brown called Antetokounmpo a “child” after he faked a handshake with Brown during Boston’s 113-107 victory over Milwaukee.
Nike, however, disagreed with that assessment. After Anteotkounmpo’s standout performance against Detroit, the Nike Basketball Twitter account fired off a tweet that read simply: “Nothing childish about ‘em. 59 for the Greek freak.”
Nothing childish about ‘em. 59 for the Greek freak.
— Nike Basketball (@nikebasketball) November 14, 2024
So, what’s behind Brown’s beef with Nike and vice versa? For one, the Celtics star reportedly turned down several endorsement deals, supposedly including Nike, in order to launch his own shoe line. But when Brown missed out on making Team USA for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, he then blamed Nike for the decision.
Of course, there wasn’t actually any evidence to support Brown’s insinuation Team USA stars such as Steph Curry (Under Armour), Joel Embiid (Sketcher) and Anthony Edwards (Adidas) all have massive deals with other large shoe companies. So there’s not really much sense to his claim either.
“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,” USA Basketball managing director Grant Hill told reporters when asked about Brown’s claim.
Now, would it have been easy for Nike to just ignore Brown? Of course it would. But this is the NBA, where the off-court drama often exceeds what’s happening on the court. So that was never going to actually happen. Now we just sit back and wait to see what sort of wild response Brown cooks up.