Jaylen Brown has been in the spotlight since being named MVP of both the Eastern Conference Finals and the NBA Finals, and people are starting to look back on his journey. And one question always pops up: Why did a top-five prospect out of Georgia who was scouted by every major basketball school choose to play at Cal? Cal’s basketball program is a mess, and Golden Bears fans were ecstatic when Cal went 13-19 overall and 9-11 in the conference last season.
This week’s report CBS Sports Eric Bossi We’ll follow Brown’s journey to Berkeley, but first, we need to point out one thing: while UC’s basketball program is struggling right now (seven straight losing seasons), that wasn’t the case when Brown committed to UC on May 1, 2015. At the time, the Bears had had eight consecutive winning seasons, five of which saw them win 20 or more games and four of which saw them qualify for the NCAA Tournament.
Still, Brown’s choice of UC came as a surprise, according to a May 2, 2015, report. ESPN article The article announcing his decision included the following passage:
California wasn’t a big factor in much of Brown’s recruiting, so people were surprised when the talented small forward visited Berkeley in March.
The fact that ESPN found out about Brown’s commitment through his AAU coach rather than a splashy announcement from Brown himself says a lot about him.
This week’s CBS Sports article has more on Brown’s hiring: It contains this excerpt:
Considered a top-five prospect because of his 6-foot-7 height, athleticism and scoring ability, the Marietta, Georgia native was being courted by the best of the best. He visited Kansas, UCLA and others before settling on a top-four list of California, Kentucky, Michigan and North Carolina.
Brown walked at his own pace. He was intelligent, analytical and conscious of how he presented himself to the world. It wasn’t about branding. It was very important to Brown that people understand that he was more than just a basketball player, more than a showman. He didn’t have to go through a scout to get him. It was just him and his mother, Mechalee Brown, searching for the perfect position.
“He was one of the most mature, intelligent kids I’ve ever recruited,” one assistant coach involved in the process told CBS Sports. “It felt like you were talking to a real person, the questions were real, it felt like you were dealing with a mature adult.”
High school highlights:
Brown has said little publicly about his hiring, leaving reporters to speculate about his intentions.
One key factor made the difference: In mid-April, UC coach Cuonzo Martin committed five-star recruit Ivan Love, a power forward from Oakland who had a strong relationship with Brown. Another factor may have been Shareef Abdur-Rahim, who attended the same Georgia high school as Brown and played at UC before becoming an NBA star. But his relationship with Love and the academics UC offered seem to have had a bigger impact.
Brown’s recruiting saga had a disappointing ending. According to a CBS Sports article::
When Brown finally committed on Friday, May 1, he, in typical Jaylen Brown fashion, simply told former 247Sports director of basketball Evan Daniels that he had committed.
Brown played just one season at Cal in 2015-16, averaging 14.6 points, 5.4 rebounds and 2.0 assists but shooting just 29.4 percent from the 3-point line, which stood at 20’9″ at the time – three feet closer than the NBA line. Brown was named to the Pac-12 Conference First Team and the Bears went 23-11 and qualified for the NCAA Tournament. The team has not made the NCAA Tournament since.
Brown was selected third overall by the Celtics in the 2016 NBA Draft and blossomed into a star player, whose character was defined in the years that followed by his outspokenness on social issues and his influence as vice president of the NBA players union.
He was a member of the University of California Chess Club, though there are conflicting reports about his skill at the university. More importantly, he has taken graduate classes at UC since graduating as an undergraduate, and he even spoke at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2018.
His decision to come to UC doesn’t seem so surprising now.
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