Top 50 Cal Pros: No. 14 - Jaylen Brown, NBA Champ, 4X All-Star

We are counting down Cal’s top 50 athletes based on their careers as post-collegiate professionals. Their performance as Golden Bears is not factored into the rankings.

14. JAYLEN BROWN

Year at Cal: 2015-16

Sport: Basketball

Pro team: Boston Celtics

Age: 28

Hometown: Marietta, Georgia

Why we ranked him here: Drafted third in the first round in 2016 by Boston, the 6-foot-6 wing has played all nine NBA seasons with the Celtics, quickly developing into a star. Brown has averaged better than 20 points per game the past six seasons, has helped the Celtics into the postseason every year and is a four-time All-Star. Brown posted career highs 26.6 points and 6.9 rebounds per game in 2022-23, earning second-team All-NBA honors. That qualified him to sign a five-year, $304 million supermax contract extension, making him the highest-paid player in league history at the time. The Celtics were rewarded less than a year later when Brown helped them win the 2024 NBA title, their first since 2008. He averaged 23.0 points in the regular season and 29.8 points, including 40 in Game 2, in an Eastern Conference finals sweep of Indiana, earning him the Larry Bird Trophy as the series MVP. Brown provided 20.8 points, 5.4 rebounds and 5.0 assists and took home the Bill Russell Trophy as MVP after Boston’s 4-1 series win over Dallas in the NBA Finals. He scored 30 points as the Celtics won Game 3 for a commanding 3-0 series lead. In this season’s postseason, after Jayson Tatum was lost to an Achilles injury, Brown had 26 points, a career-high 12 assists and eight rebounds in Boston’s 127-102 Game 5 win over New York in the Eastern Conference semifinals. The Knicks won two days later to send the defending champions home. Brown, who scored a career-high 50 points against Orlando in 2022, put up 35 points in the 2023 All-Star Game and 36 in the event a year later. His career average of 19.0 points through nine seasons is the highest of any Cal alum.

Jaylen Brown at Cal | John Hefti-Imagn Images

At Cal: Brown came to Cal from the same hometown of former Golden Bears’ star Shareef Abdur-Rahim and followed the same one-and-done path to the NBA. He averaged 14.6 points and 5.4 rebounds, was named All-Pac-12 and Pac-12 Freshman of the Year while helping the Bears to their most recent NCAA tournament bid. Brown twice scored 27 points in a game at Cal. An inquisitive student, Brown took a graduate-level class as a freshman.

Jaylen Brown visiting Cal | Photo by Darren Yamashita

Other: Active off the court, Brown was named as an MIT Media Lab fellow in 2019, and he has collaborated with the university to create the Bridge Program, which mentors youth and high school students of color in the Boston area. He also has has spoken on the importance of education and technology at Harvard, MIT and UC Berkeley. In 2020, Brown drove 15 hours from Boston to Atlanta to lead a peaceful protest march after the police shooting death of George Floyd. In 2022, he became the youngest elected NBA Players Association vice president.

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