Recruiters nationwide were perplexed when Jaylen Brown committed to the University of California, Berkeley. Here was one of the most athletically gifted prospects in his class — long, explosive, and versatile — and he was passing up traditional basketball factories for an academically rigorous public university known more for Nobel laureates than NBA draft picks. It was, to put it plainly, an unusual choice. However, Brown’s story has never been traditional.
Berkeley, also known as Cal, is regularly ranked as one of the world’s best public universities. You don’t go to this school to add to your basketball highlights. Brown made the conscious choice, and his on-court performance would later validate the aspect of his personality that was revealed. He put it simply in an interview with Time magazine in 2024: Cal is a place where people use their platforms for something greater than themselves. Someone searching for a quick way to the draft is not the source of that kind of thinking.
By all accounts, his 2015–16 rookie campaign was strong. He was named Pac-12 Freshman of the Year after averaging 14.6 points and 5.4 rebounds per game. Although Brown scored just four points in an upset in the first round of the NCAA tournament, the basketball community had already had enough. He entered the 2016 NBA Draft, and the Boston Celtics chose him third overall.
His degree was never completed. It’s important to be honest about that part. Like most elite prospects, Brown left after a year when the opportunity and money were genuine. This is where his story deviates from the common perception of athletes who drop out of school early. When the coursework ended, the academic curiosity continued.
Brown received the prestigious title of fellow at MIT’s Media Lab in 2019. NASA extended an internship offer to him. Most notably, he was the youngest Harvard University lecturer in history. These are not resume bullet points for promotion. They suggest a genuine intellectual engagement with the world that most people in professional sports — and frankly, most people in general — simply don’t pursue.
So when sports commentator Colin Cowherd suggested, citing NBA sources, that Brown “suddenly thinks he’s the smartest guy in every room,” it landed differently than most analyst takes do. Brown’s response was blunt and, if you know his background, almost logical. “No offense to everybody in sports, but the bar is low,” he stated. It’s the kind of comment that gets clipped and circulated as arrogance. It’s possible, though, that it was just candor.
There’s something worth sitting with here. The stereotype of the intellectually disengaged athlete has followed professional basketball for decades. Brown appears to be genuinely annoyed by it, not in a showy manner, but rather in the same way that someone gets annoyed when a lazy assumption follows them everywhere they go. The Harvard lecture, the NASA offer, the MIT fellowship—none of it seemed to change the perception. After just one trade, the topic of whether he is overconfident for his own good comes up again.
Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, and Brown have joined the Philadelphia 76ers, who appear to have a truly competitive roster. The 76ers’ ability to pursue their first championship since 1983 will depend on a number of factors, including chemistry, health, and the typical unpredictability of basketball predictions. It’s difficult to argue that the confidence is misplaced, though, given that Brown averaged career highs of 28.7 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 5.1 assists while leading a Celtics team through a full season mostly without Jayson Tatum.
It’s possible that Jaylen Brown’s college degree is incomplete. By all accounts, he is still very much in the process of learning.
