Jaylen Brown speaks to the media on Wednesday about the plans he has with his new contract extension.
Jaylen Brown is very good at basketball. Ever since the Boston Celtics drafted him in 2016, he has become one of the NBA’s
most accomplished players. He just finished the best season of his career, a season that earned him a spot on the All-NBA
second team and his second NBA All-Star game appearance. In fact, the only season in the past three years where he did not
make an All-Star team was in 2022. He only made the NBA Finals that year.
But Brown is conscious of his success. He understands how much power he has in his community and the massive platform
he accrued over the past decade. He knows that his auspicious basketball career has given him opportunities that most Black
Americans have never had.
Because of that basketball career, Brown earned the richest contract in basketball history on Sunday. With that new money,
he vows to help make Boston a prosperous city for Black people.
“I want to launch a project to bring Black Wall Street here to Boston,” Brown said on Wednesday. “I want to attack the
wealth disparity here.”
Black Wall Street alludes to the name given to Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood District, one of America’s most affluent Black
communities in the early 20th century. Brown wants to use the money toward his extension to help Black Americans prosper
in Boston the way they did in Tulsa a century ago.
“With the biggest financial deal in NBA history,” Brown said, “It makes sense to talk about, one, your investment in the
community, but two, also, the wealth disparity here that nobody wants to talk about.”
According to the Samuel Dubois Cook Center on Social Equity, average Black households have only 5-10% the wealth of a
white household. In Boston, the median wealth of a US-born Black household is just $8, compared to $247,500 for a white
household. Brown acknowledged that this racial wealth gap here is something to fix.
“It’s something that we can all improve on,” Brown said. “It’s unsettling.”
Brown wants to fix this by using his money and partnering with people in power to bridge the wealth gap and generate more
opportunities for Black Bostonians.
“I think through my platform, through influential partners, through selected leaders, government officials, a lot who are in
this room,” Brown said, “That we can come together and create new jobs, new resources, new businesses, new ideas that
could highlight minorities but also stimulate the economy and the wealth gap at the same time.”
Three hundred and four million dollars is a lot of money. Specifically, it’s a lot of money that can be put toward bettering
communities and people. That was what Brown first thought of when he saw his brand new contract.
“When [the contract] first was finalized,” Brown said, “The first thing that came to mind was like, ‘Look what all you can do
with it now,’ how much you can invest into your community, what you can build with it, what you can change, how many
lives you can touch and what you can do in real time.”
Brown is aware of the power and influence he has as an NBA star. He knows that every word that he says will be analyzed,
critiqued, and broadcast throughout America. Brown enjoys that opportunity, because it gives him the opportunity to speak
on behalf of those who can’t.
“For me to be able to go out there every single night and play,” Brown said, “but also represent the causes and the things that
I stand for in the community, represent being a voice for the voiceless, to me it gives my life…so much more purpose.”
Brown knows how several Black athletes of the past used their prominence to stand up for people who didn’t have nearly as
powerful of a voice. He admires what they have done for athletes like him who want to make a similar difference.
“I’m excited to represent the city, this organization,” Brown said. “I’m excited to play. Excited to walk in the lives of people
like John Carlos (who attended Brown’s press conference on Wednesday), people like Bill Russell, etc. who have paved the
way for athletes, just in general, to be able to have platforms.”
Times have changed from Russell’s era to Brown’s. But Brown knows that his new deal is only the beginning of his journey to
make Boston a racially-equal place financially. More change is coming, and Brown is ready to incite it.
“I think that life is changing,” Brown said. “The world is changing and I’m proud to be a part of that change.”
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