Jaylen Brown knew he would be special long before he took home the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP Award for his part in the Boston Celtics’ dominant 2024 NBA Finals run.
It was during pregame warmups at a 2016 finals game between the Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers at Oracle Arena that the then Cal Bear guard great called his shot.
“I’m Jaylen Brown, [I attend] California Berkeley right up the street, [and] one day I’ll be here in the [NBA] Finals,” Brown said … “I want to be here so bad. I will be here.” (h/t Point Forward)
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Jaylen Brown taking in the Warriors warmups ahead of the 2016 Finals when he was a draft prospect.
— Point Forward (@pointforward) June 18, 2024
“One day I’ll be in the NBA Finals…”
8 years later, he’s an NBA Champ & Finals MVP ✅ pic.twitter.com/xK3ibGUVfg
During that night in Oakland, the current Celtics wing was just a hopeful 2016 NBA Draft prospect.
Brown was coming off a strong freshman campaign in Berkeley, where the then 19-year-old was an All-Pac-12 selection after averaging 14.6 points, 5.4 rebounds and 2 assists per game.
He also took Cal to the 2016 NCAA Tournament, which the program hasn’t returned to since.
Golden State Warriors
Brown has come a long way since he watched the Warriors and Cavs face off in the prime of their rivalry.
In fact, he was starstruck when watching Golden State players warm up -- not yet knowing he would face off with some them in the 2022 NBA Finals.
“Right now, I got like an adrenaline rush,” Brown shared. “I’m watching Steph Curry warm up, I’m watching Andre Iguodala warm up. I feel excited and ready to go. The draft is right around the corner, and I’ll have my chance.”
While Brown knew ultimately he would reach the NBA Finals as a professional, surely he couldn’t have imagined his first series on the game’s biggest stage would come against those very same Warriors six years later, where his Celtics would fall to Curry and Iguodala’s squad in six games -- talk about full circle.
Also in the video, Brown caught up with Iguodala, and the two wished each other luck before tip-off.
“Andre, he was my coach at the NBA camp about three years ago,” Brown said in 2016. “So he just came up to me, this was my first time seeing him in three years. He remembered me, and he said he called it. He said I knew I would be ‘here.’
“It’s almost unreal. It’s a great feeling. It means I have a chance to do something special. He -- I’m obviously unique. I appreciate Iggy, man. We have a good relationship… I don’t even know how I’m supposed to react to [what he said], but it feels great.”
Igudola knew something about Brown that NBA scouts didn’t, as he had his eyes on the current finals MVP since he was in high school.
However, the scouts would catch up to the now-retired 19-year NBA veteran, as Brown was selected No. 3 overall by the Celtics in 2016.
Brown, who has improved year after year, amazingly turned his vision into a reality. Besides recently winning his first title, Brown also became -- and still is -- the highest-paid player in the league -- and it's history -- after signing a five-year, $303.7M supermax extension last summer, which was the first $300 million contract an NBA player has ever seen.
At 27 years old, Brown averaged 23.9 points, 5.9 rebounds and 3.3 assists over 19 games in the 2024 playoffs, and he earned finals MVP for admirable two-way efforts against the Mavericks’ Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving.
Before Brown made a name for himself in the NBA with Boston, he first was a top prospect and fan in the Bay, watching Golden State dominate like everyone else.