The leadership of Boston’s Jaylen Brown in these times is no accident

Boston’s Jaylen Brown has been honing the leadership skills we saw in action this week for a long, long time.

The leadership you are seeing from Boston Celtics shooting guard Jaylen Brown didn’t appear out of thin air this season — his background has been preparing him for a moment in time like this one for many, many years.

When he arrived at Berkeley and noticed he had been given a suitably light load of classes to enable him to focus on basketball as a freshman entering the NCAA ranks, he scoffed.

And immediately went looking for more intellectually satisfying alternatives, reports The Athletic’s Marcus Thompson II.

Dropping three of his assigned classes, he would add an African American Studies class taught by Hardy Frye, a former member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee — a key organization in the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

He would also add an upper-level class from Global Poverty and Practice minor program taught by Cecilia Lucas, known for her work studying the engagement of racial justice and decolonization by whites in the U.S.

Finally, he added “Theoretical Foundations for the Cultural Studies of Sport and Education,” a graduate course he needed special permission to register for.

“No freshman in the history of this course has ever taken this course,” related the professor, Derek Van Rheenen, to Brown. “It’s not meant for a freshman.”

Do you think that stopped the future Celtic?

It of course did not; Brown had heard positive things from mentor Isiah Thomas and his liaison at Berkeley Hashim Ali about the course, and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Used to being challenged intellectually outside of his course load by his mother — who earned an MBA as a single mother at Michigan — and grandmother, the Georgia native was persistent until Van Rheenen relented, with the proviso he get it cleared with the dean.

And of course, it was.

“Jaylen said if I wanted to just play basketball, I would’ve went to Kentucky. I wanted an education, so I came to Cal. He advocated for himself. I was in the studio with Tupac and I knew,” related Ali.

“Jaylen is a fourth-generation college student within his family structure,” shared his mother via text to Thomas. “Going to college and getting an education was the family protocol and my focus in raising my children. I’m proud that Jaylen is using his platform to speak out about the injustice and inequality in this world.”

When Brown made his visit to Cal as a prospective high school talent, Ali was one of several who met with the Marietta native, a meeting which filled him with a sensation of deja vu he’d only experienced one other time before.

That time was when he met a young, up-and-coming rapper in a friend’s studio who gave off a similar feel, a sensation of difference in his presence that was somewhat ineffible, but palpable.

His name was Tupac Shakur.

““I had the same feeling when I met Jaylen,” explained Ali. “And I haven’t felt that since Pac. That feeling that this young man was going to be special and you just knew it.”

We are seeing that specialness, that leadership and selflessness right now.

With more to lose than many of us will ever even dream of, he is in the streets, using his platform and his presence as a rallying cry — and a rallying cry with a purpose at that.

Jaylen Brown is a national treasure, and we are blessed to call him a Boston Celtic, a fellow citizen, and human being.

Whenever possible, let us be more than just an ally but rather co-conspirators to the cause he’s putting everything on the line for — the cause of equality before the law.

We are faced with a historic moment, a moment he is uniquely equipped to help lead.

Will we choose to follow?

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