Jaylen Brown has come a long way since being drafted by the Boston Celtics in 2016, and was having a career year when the NBA halted operations in March.
But he’s still in search of his first NBA championship, like the one Kevin Garnett claimed with the C’s in 2008. Garnett and Brown never got the chance to be teammates, but that didn’t stop KG from offering up a bit of advice to Brown during his rookie season when he noticed the guard had his head down while on the bench.
“I was at the end of the bench with my head down,” Brown recently said during a video interview with ESPN’s Ros Gold-Onwude, as transcribed by MassLive, “and he sent a voice message through my strength coach over the phone like, ‘You better pick your mother(expletive) head up.’ He was cursing me out. He was like, ‘You’ve got to carry yourself a certain way.’ So he told me to pick my head up and fix my body language, right the (expletive) now.”
Brown added that Garnett is someone he’s “chasing here in Boston.”
“(He’s) somebody I’m chasing here in Boston, he was the last person to win a championship,” he said. “That’s something I would like to do while I’m here with the Celtics. I’m definitely inspired by Kevin Garnett. I think we’re totally two different people, we play two different positions, but I would like to model my approach after his, and hopefully we will down the road be looked at as similar.”
Brown and the Celtics will have a chance at Banner 18 once the 2019-20 season resumes July 30.
