In Another Cryptic Tweet Jaylen Brown Seemed To Take More Shots At Nike For His Team USA Snub

Juan Ocampo. Getty Images.

Unless you've been living under a rock, it's hard to avoid all the drama surrounding Jaylen Brown and Team USA since it was announced that NBA Champion Derrick White would be taking Kawhi Leonard's spot after he pulled out. It's a bit of a weird situation because on one hand I am very excited to see Bald Derrick do his thing on Team USA, while on the other hand I don't think it's crazy to suggest Jaylen himself was snubbed. Given the positional and skillset similarities to Kawhi, Jaylen would have been a more than solid choice.

Basically, there's no wrong selection in my opinion. Both guys are elite two way players who play a style of basketball that would help any team on the planet. 

Once the news dropped, all hell sort of broke loose. Everyone tried to figure out why Team USA went the way they did, if it was player driven, if it was Jaylen's social impact, all the typical speculation we're forced to have when all we had to work with was emojis

Things became a little clearer a few hours after that initial tweet when Jaylen called out Nike by name

Of course, there are plenty of ways to interpret this tweet as well. That's the thing with these vague tweets, it's impossible to know exactly what Jaylen is actually talking about. Is this about Nike going with Derrick White? Or is it Nike that ultimately put their foot down and kept Jaylen Brown off the roster for his prior tweets about Nike during the whole Kyrie fiasco? 

That second option feels a little more plausible to me, and when Grant Hill was asked about this yesterday it reinforced that feeling for me even more

Like most things in life, it usually makes sense to follow the money. Is it a little ridiculous for a company like Nike to hold a grudge for 2 years to the point where a more than worthy player is kept off a basketball roster? Of course, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.

Which brings me to Jaylen Brown today. It is starting to feel like we can put together what he's talking about with this whole thing

Again, another vague tweet. In fairness, we're all sort of assuming this is about Nike, but given his tweet yesterday and then this today, is it a stretch to think this is all Nike related? Let's not forget what graphic was shown on TV last night in Vegas

Almost everything in life boils down to some sort of politics on some level, even making the Team USA roster. Sometimes it's player driven like what we saw with Isiah Thomas way back when

and sometimes it's perhaps corporate-driven like we may be seeing here with Jaylen. The game is the game as they say.

By far the most annoying part of all of this drama is what we saw today with Jayson Tatum. The fact that he even has to answer questions like this is pretty lame

because it's not like he has any impact on what this roster looks like. He's basically in a no-win position here. Derrick White and Jaylen Brown are both his teammates who he just won a title with. I'm sure he'd love to have them both on the roster if he had his choosing, but you can understand why he took his patented non-committal approach here. 

Who knows, maybe this is actually the work of former Sixers executive and Team USA Godfather Jerry Colangelo in a diabolical attempt to cause drama within the champs' locker room or at the very least create a media narrative that there could be, so that the Sixers might actually have a chance next season. But when you lay everything out and see how Jaylen is tweeting, it feels more like this is a Nike/corporate issue. Why they felt the need to do something like this is anyone's guess, and something tells me we won't ever hear the full story.

As a Celtics fan? I sneaky love this snub. We all saw what happened when Jaylen was snubbed from All NBA Defense during the postseason, he immediately turned around and had a monster defensive performance that helped win a title. Then a few weeks later when he got snubbed from All NBA during the ECF, he immediately dropped 40 in another win.

So now that we get to add a Team USA snub? Just don't be surprised if Jaylen comes back with an MVP caliber season. If anyone knows how to use this shit as fuel to come back even better, it's Jaylen.