“Sell Your Soul”: Jaylen Brown’s ‘Poignant’ Advice On How To Be An NBA MVP

What’s that one thing that infuriates basketball fans who tune into enjoy the sport they love? Stoppage during plays for soft, questionable fouls would be a good guess. There’s a word for it: flopping. And in recent years, many have admittedly resorted to it to get their numbers up (allegedly, at least). Jaylen Brown recently hinted that it’s also an essential component for success.

Brown is an avid streamer and often says fairly audacious things online. But if Adam Silver tuned into his recent stream, he might feel that Brown’s claim about how an MVP is chosen today is the most outrageous of them all.

The Boston Celtics star, who has been the iconic franchise’s main man in Jayson Tatum’s absence, feels that flopping is the way to go. Considering how much the reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is accused of doing the same, he may have a point.

“If you wanna be a great player, you gotta sell your soul,” Brown said. “You gotta be a flopper. If you wanna be an MVP, you wanna be top of the top, you gotta sell your soul and just be a flopper.” 

Well, Gilgeous-Alexander has been at the forefront of some questionable calls made by refs in recent months. Often, he’s seen latching himself onto defenders before drawing intentional contact and scrambling on the floor, leading to a whistle. That’s not a pretty sight, but it helps put up impressive numbers.

The Oklahoma City icon had an average of 9 free-throws attempted per game in his title winning (and MVP) season. This year, the number has gone up a notch. He’s averaging more than 10 free throws a game. But if we take a trip down memory lane and look at previous winners of the MVP, we see a trend.

Both Joel Embiid (2023 winner) and Giannis Antetokounmpo (2019 and 2020 winner) averaged around 10 free-throws a game which made them one of the best scorers in the league. Embiid’s game, at his peak, for instance, relied on pump fakes, rip-throughs, and drawing contact.

Nikola Jokic on the other hand isn’t a free throw machine, but remains an elite scorer. And the interesting thing? Out all the names just mentioned, the Serbian is the only one who has won the MVP thrice. His numbers were astronomically good (around 28 ppg in all three seasons) despite getting just 4-5 shots at the line per game. But it should also be taken into account that Jokic outshines both Embiid and Giannis when it comes to rebounds. He had 12, 13, and 10 rebounds per game in each of his MVP seasons.

So, it’s not mandatory for a player to “sell his soul”, as Brown put it. But it certainly helps. After all, players who get more FT attempts end up higher on the scoring charts nowadays.