While Jayson Tatum is frequently hailed as the best Boston Celtics player, it was Jaylen Brown who earned the 2024 Eastern Conference Finals MVP award. He was the most clutch bucket-getter in the series against the Indiana Pacers and his two-way prominence this season deserved an All-NBA nomination. Unfortunately, he wasn’t awarded an All-NBA selection despite the Celtics recording the most wins in the 2023-24 season. Brown’s All-NBA snub prompted Kevin Garnett to make a unique comment about All-NBA nominations.
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Garnett believes that Brown deserved an All-NBA selection and was unfairly left out of the elite list. On his KG Certified podcast, the 2008 Champion argued that All-NBA selections are now decided based on the value of a player’s stocks in the market. Hence, underrated players like Brown tend to get the short end of the stick.
He then brought up a stock-market analogy to make his point. “The league gotta change a lot of things...Just like the NASDAQ, if your stock ain’t what it is, if you ain’t putting the body of work in that year, your peers [overtake] you,” Kevin Garnett told Paul Pierce.
KG believes that the league prioritized the big names of certain players over the body of work Brown put in. This argument points back to Stephen A. Smith’s ‘remarks’ claiming Jaylen Brown is not very marketable.
KG opined that since his team lived up to the billing, Brown deserved the selection over both Kawhi Leonard and Devin Booker. Garnett wished that the voters put more than one Celtic (Jayson Tatum) on the All-NBA list to appreciate their consistency.
Meanwhile, Garnett praised Brown for not succumbing to the snub and concentrating on landing a title. Echoing the sentiments of KG and Pierce, JB’s teammates also expressed their dismay.
Payton Pritchard and Jayson Tatum thought JB deserved to be included
Like KG, Celtics’ back-up guard Payton Pritchard didn’t understand how they just had one All-NBA selection despite being the only team with over 60 wins this season. He alluded to Brown’s two-way prowess and considered him an automatic selection for the NBA top team honors.
“JB, that’s a snub, for sure. I don’t understand how you can be the No. 1 team by a wide margin and only have one dude. JB’s been terrific all year. Two-way player. He definitely deserves to be on there,” Pritchard said.
On the other hand, 3x All-NBA First Team Jayson Tatum wanted his teammate to at least be included in one of the three teams. He conveyed, “We all felt like, internally, that he should have made one of the All-NBA teams.”
Brown was largely snubbed because his average fell compared to last season. This was a result of him opting for more team-oriented basketball while focusing more energy on the defensive end. He won’t mind the snub one bit if he can help his Celts lift their 18th championship in franchise history in the upcoming NBA Finals.
