Bill Simmons has a lot of love for Jaylen Brown now, but he wasn’t a happy man when the Boston Celtics selected him with the third pick of the 2016 NBA Draft. Simmons’ Twitter post criticizing the Celtics for drafting Brown with that pick recently resurfaced on X.
“The Celtics just took the 7th pick in the draft at no. 3 and used no. 16 on a French guy sitting in the stands. I’m gonna make a drink.”
Bill Simmons the night we drafted Jaylen Brown pic.twitter.com/xgCMIMm8XL
— Alex (@Alexzachary305) June 23, 2024
Safe to say, that ended up being a terrible take from Simmons. Brown is now a Finals MVP, an Eastern Conference Finals MVP, and a three-time All-Star. He just played a big role in the Celtics ending their 16-season title drought and has silenced his doubters.
To be fair to Simmons, though, he was far from the only one not pleased with that selection. A watch party was held at TD Garden for the draft and Celtics fans started booing when the team picked Brown. Even owner Wyc Grousbeck was booed when he was explaining why they had made the selection.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdVhoaIsJ2w
Now, Brown was rated highly coming into that draft, but not high enough to be the third pick. He was a very raw prospect, and it was quite a risk to select him with that pick, which was why they were booing.
Brown was seen as an explosive athlete who had the potential to excel on defense but there were big question marks about his offense. He didn’t have a reliable jump shot and his handle was suspect too.
In his only season at the University of California, Berkeley, Brown averaged 14.6 points, 5.4 rebounds, 2.0 assists, 0.8 steals, and 0.6 blocks per game. He shot just 43.1% from the field and 29.4% from beyond the arc, though, and averaged 3.1 turnovers per game.
The Celtics backed themselves to develop Brown and get the best out of him on offense, which is exactly what they ended up doing. In the 2023-24 season, the 27-year-old averaged 23.0 points, 5.5 rebounds, 3.6 assists, 1.2 steals, and 0.5 blocks per game, and shot a career-best 49.9% from the field.
Brown is now regarded as one of the best wings in the NBA and looks set to become a perennial All-Star. The Celtics deserve a lot of credit for selecting and then developing him. As for the players who were picked after him, well a lot of them failed to impress.
Dragan Bender, Kris Dunn, Buddy Hield, Jamal Murray, Marquese Chriss, Jakob Poeltl, and Thon Maker were selected with the seven picks after Brown, and none of them have even made an All-Star team. Murray will make one at some point, but he is the only one with a realistic chance at it.
Getting back to that post from Simmons, he was right to doubt the “French guy” the Celtics selected. Guerschon Yabusele was taken with the 16th pick and he joined the team a year later in 2017.
Yabusele’s time with the Celtics would prove to be rather short, as they waived him after two seasons, in which he averaged 2.3 points and 1.4 rebounds per game. That would also be the end of his time in the NBA, as he headed to China to play for the Nanjing Monkey Kings.
A short stint in France followed, after which Yabusele signed with Real Madrid in 2021. He won the EuroLeague with them in 2023 and has proven to be a fine acquisition for the Spanish team.
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