Jaylen Brown Reacted To Not Getting Kawhi Leonard’s Spot On The USA Olympic Team

When USA Basketball announced their 12-man roster for the Olympics earlier this summer, there were a couple significant question marks on the roster due to injury concerns. Joel Embiid had knee troubles off and on all season and would be coming off of a playoff run, while Kawhi Leonard was unable to play for the Clippers in the playoffs and would have just a couple months to get ready for an extended summer run with Team USA.

While Embiid seems to be ready to go for Paris, the unfortunately unsurprising news broke on Wednesday that Leonard was withdrawing from the team due to continued inflammation in his knee. In his place, USA Basketball turned to the champion Boston Celtics to add a third member from that title team to the roster, but instead of Finals MVP Jaylen Brown, they opted to bolster their point guard rotation with Derrick White.

That wasn’t a shocker for many plugged into Team USA, but it was a bit of a surprise to those on the outside, including Brown himself who posted a bit of a cryptic and curious reaction on Twitter.

Last year, Brown spoke about what playing for Team USA on the Olympic squad would mean to him, saying there’s “no greater honor” than playing for USA Basketball at the Olympics.

Team USA certainly needed to bolster its defense, but Brown also played pretty tremendously on that end in the Finals — his work on Luka Doncic was largely a reason he earned Finals MVP. The biggest thing might’ve been that White wouldn’t be too worried about his minutes load, although it’s possible he gets plenty of run, especially if Team USA decides they need more defense than someone like, say, Tyrese Haliburton can provide at the point of attack. In any case, Brown is understandably not happy with the snub and that it’s his teammate that got the call makes the news all the more bittersweet.