JAYLEN BROWN BELONGS ON THE U.S. OLYMPIC TEAM, AS GRANT HILL KNOWS

NBA bosses shouldn’t be running USA Basketball when they cause turbulence, putting Derrick White on the team instead of Brown, and the cryptic emojis will keep coming as a worthy Celtic is omitted

     A controversy involving Grant Hill is a first. Thanks to a Duke/Krzyzewski education, a childhood with NFL star Calvin Hill as his father and a TV romance with Queen Latifah — want more? — he’s a uniquely respected figure in basketball. Know anyone else who gets along with Charles Barkley and pokes fun at Jim Nantz?

     So please explain why he’s running Team USA as a co-owner of the Atlanta Hawks, while coach Steve Kerr runs the Golden State Warriors. They decided to keep Jaylen Brown off the Olympic team, prompting offseason turbulence in what should be the peaceful domain of the NBA champion Boston Celtics. When Kawhi Leonard left training camp, the perfect replacement would have been Brown, known as Kawhi 2.0, flaunting defensive lockdown skills even better than his offensive chores.

     He won the Finals MVP award. He won the Eastern Conference finals MVP award. Isn’t this his time to crackle for the world? Well, Hill and Kerr named Derrick White, Brown’s teammate, and said he’d be the ideal successor. Brown did not agree, flashing three cryptic emojis wearing one temporary eyeglass Wednesday. Then he followed by asking his former sneaker bosses at Nike: “This what we doing?”

     So here we go again, into dissension land, which Brown and Jayson Tatum seemed to  end with a five-game victory over Dallas. Suddenly, Tatum, White and Jrue Holiday are on the U.S. team from the Celtics — and Brown is not. Did Hill and Kerr fear that Brown could cause disorder on a team attempting to win in Paris? Furthermore, don’t his tweets continue to be bothersome as Boston tries to repeat next season? Wouldn’t that interest, say, Kerr? And even Hill, though his Hawks aren’t competitive? NBA bosses should not be running USA Basketball.

     Thursday, Brown continued on X about his snub. “(I'm) not afraid of you or your resources,” he said, perhaps referring to Nike or ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, who only continued his May thoughts that Brown is “not liked because of his I-am-better-than-you attitude" and is "not as marketable as he should be.” Look, winning a title and two MVP awards should be enough. Why not?

     “For a good portion of my career, I wore FILA,” said Hill, laughing Wednesday night. “We're proud of our partners, obviously, at USA Basketball. But this is about putting together a team. ... You've got 12 spots. You have to build a team. One of the hardest things is leaving people off the roster that I'm a fan of, that I look forward to watching. The responsibility that I have is to put together a team, and a team that complements each other, a team that fits, a team that will give us the best opportunity for success. Whatever theories that might be out there, they're just that.”

     A team that … fits.

     Why is Brown miffed at Nike when he isn’t associated with the product? In 2022, he chirped at founder Phil Knight when Kyrie Irving was suspended by the NBA. No doubt he’s a ballbuster. Think LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant want a piece of Brown every day?

     Or Tatum?

     Point being, America’s 12 best players should be on the team. White is not one of them. Jaylen Brown belongs, with more emojis to come.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.