Jaylen Brown recently secured a $304 million contract extension with the Boston Celtics, a supermax deal to last over the span of the next five years. This will make him the highest earner in the NBA, with an average salary of $60.8 million per season. As one might expect, there have been many to disapprove of the contract. Certain Front office executives even went as far as to say the Celtics star is no better than the fifth-best player on Boston’s roster. While former NBA player, JJ Redick may not have an opinion that strong on the matter, he revealed that he wasn’t for the contract either.
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Brown also endorses his own charity called the ‘7uice Foundation’. The organization focuses on providing colored youth with ‘life-changing opportunities’ that could prove life-changing for them. More than all else, it prioritizes making sure the youth gets the opportunities they deserve, but have missed out on due to racial biases. To help this, the Celtics star’s contract has a clause that says that on July 1st of every year, he will be paid $7,777,777, which will go directly toward the foundation’s funding.
JJ Redick reveals why he is against Jaylen Brown’s contract
JJ Redick has quickly gained the NBA community’s respect as one of the few true analysts available on television. Of course, he is also available on his podcast, ‘The Old Man and the Three’. On his show, he has the license to be far more honest compared to his time on ESPN’s ‘First Take’. And it was here that he discussed why he doesn’t believe Jaylen Brown deserved his contract. Here is what he said on the matter, as seen in Redick’s Twitter post.
“There’s two questions here. Does Jaylen Brown deserve to get more money than (Nikola Jokic), or Giannis (Antetokounmpo), or (Stephen Curry), or LeBron (James) in salary? The answer to that is no.
Did the Celtics have to re-sign him…? The answer to that is yes. They’re trying to win a championship. They are best positioned to not allow Jaylen Brown to go into free agency. So, the answer is yes. Both can be true.
The intention of a supermax, if you look at, really the two biggest free agents over this generation that just went into unrestricted free agency, in LeBron James in 2010 and Kevin Durant in 2016. In both those cases, they were leaving teams that drafted them. In both those cases, they wanted to enter unrestricted free agency, and there was no mechanism to sign the supermax extension. And so they hit free agency, and what happened?
The intention (of the supermax) was to keep the Kevin Durants of the world. The intention was to keep the LeBron James’ of the world, the Nikola Jokics, the Giannis’, the Stephs… But because of the mechanism… You have guys like Rudy Gobert signing for the Supermax… These (Gobert and Brown) are fantastic players… But they’re in a different tier than LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and Nikola Jokic.
While Jaylen Brown is certainly a better player than Rudy Gobert, Redick’s point does deserve some merit. After all, the supermax was indeed made to enable franchises to keep homegrown superstars at home. However, he may also be missing a key aspect of this situation.
Despite arguably being the best player on the Celtics’ roster during the last two postseasons, Brown was constantly brought up in trade rumors from trusted sources. In fact, it got bad enough that the star was publicly annoyed about the whole ordeal.
Due to that, there is a serious lack of faith in this situation. So, while Jaylen may not be that class of player just yet, if Boston wanted to keep him, it is likely that this was something they had to do.
Brown won’t be the highest-paid player for long
The NBA will be getting a new TV deal very soon, which is set to increase NBA teams’ salary cap by 10% every year for some time. With franchises enabled to give players more money, and even Jayson Tatum geared to sign a new contract within the next couple of years Brown’s contract likely won’t be the biggest in the NBA for long.
However, unfortunately for him, it will undoubtedly be scrutinized relentlessly by the NBA community until he is no longer the highest-paid player in the NBA. A shame, considering how much of a jump he has taken for the Boston Celtics.
