Jaylen Brown’s impact goes further than the Celtics’ championship

BOSTON – A recent evening with Jaylen Brown was a manifestation of the true power of sports.

We met in the lobby of a downtown residential building. Dressed head to toe in black, braids tight and beard trimmed low, the Boston Celtics guard was headed to an event just as important as the Celtics’ season opener Tuesday night, when they will receive their 2024 NBA championship rings. Brown was solo – no bodyguard, agent, or entourage – as I followed him into a black Cadillac Escalade. We drove off to a meeting with 10 businesses from disadvantaged communities that Brown and teammate Jrue Holiday are helping to grow.

Brown, 27 years old, is on top of the world right now. In last season’s championship series he destroyed the Dallas Mavericks at both ends of the floor, erased criticism about his game, and took home Finals MVP. He’s got the looks of a movie star, a song with a rap star, the contract of a superstar – yet what animates him is pouring his influence into communities that lack equal opportunity. 

“To be honest, this feels better to me,” Brown said when I asked him to compare service with playing basketball. “I feel responsible that my platform was given to me to help affect other people. The only time I feel happy is really when I’m trying to help other people.

“Hooping is like drinking water. It’s like breathing at this point. You don’t really feel anything anymore, unless it’s like those big games or those high-profile moments. But for the most part, I think my platform was given just so I could help as many people as possible.”

In 2023, after signing a then-record $304 million contract, Brown said he would use his windfall to help eliminate the racial wealth gap. In August 2024, he launched Boston XChange, with the goal of generating $5 billion in generational wealth for marginalized communities, and started a hub in Oakland. Last Wednesday, Oct. 16, Brown let me tag along with him to a gathering of the first set of XChange entrepreneurs – the Boston Creator Incubator + Accelerator Cohort.

“Five billion would be a great goal, to be able to accomplish that,” Brown told me. “But even just to continue to push boundaries forward. I think that the more we are adamant about pushing change forward, that’s the most important thing. Continuing to push, instead of being like, everything is just fine where it is.”

We hopped out of the truck and ascended escalators to Grace by Nia, a Black woman-owned supper club in the Boston Seaport neighborhood. There was no red carpet or celebrity guests, just a down-to-earth gathering of cooks, clothing designers, hatmakers and more, along with academic partners from Roxbury Community College, Suffolk University, Harvard Business School, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s School for Entrepreneurship.

Brown is focusing on the “creative economy” – people who make things. The first 10 entrepreneurs range from the Dorchester Art Project to Melanin Haircare to the Future Masters Chess Academy. Each business will receive up to $100,000 over the next three years, plus mentorship, training, and workspaces. Funds are being donated by Brown; the JLH Social Impact Fund, founded by Holiday and his wife, Lauren; and other philanthropic partners.

“True joy comes from things like this,” Jrue told me. “Seeing people’s faces when they’re talking about what they love to do. They’re hustling, talking about hats, talking about if you need a videographer or if you need a catering service, all that. To me, it shows how powerful we are as athletes, having the ability to help these people’s businesses flourish and dreams come true.”

“What’s so special about the Boston cohort is how many people have gotten behind it,” said Lauren Holiday, a former member of the U.S. women’s national soccer team. “Harvard, MIT, Jaylen’s team, it feels bigger than anything we’ve done before, and it feels like the cohort is surrounded with so many options and so many people here that have their back.”

During his eight seasons in the NBA, Brown has taken a revolutionary stance toward the status quo, whether that meant challenging police brutality against Black people or an exploitative sneaker industry. He has positioned his new sneaker brand as more of a disruptive statement than a profit enterprise. 

I wondered if Brown saw himself as a disruptor, but he said no. 

“I don’t necessarily mind it because I get the vein it’s being spoken in, but a lot of the things that I feel like I come up with or I’m a part of are solution-based,” he said. 

“Just being a disruptor and then running off in the night, you only disrupted something. Everything I’ve proposed has been solution-based, whether it’s my shoe company where I’ve listened to the cries of athletes having the lack of choices and their value being withheld within the sports agency and shoe realm. And so I created another option. You look at the wealth disparity here in Boston, people of color felt like it has been tremendously hard to start businesses and maneuver through the hegemony that exists. So I started Boston XChange. I like to offer a solution.”

My Andscape colleague Bill Rhoden, the trailblazing Black journalist and author of the definitive history of Black athlete activism, Forty Million Dollar Slaves, recently reminded us how Brown is fulfilling a higher standard for athletic greatness: “how one uses fame and visibility to advance the cause of justice, respect and freedom outside of the arena.” That’s what I saw last week as Brown spread his wealth, access and fame over his first group of entrepreneurs. 

They won’t be the last. 

“We’re building a family,” Brown told me at the end of the night. “We’re building a brotherhood, a sisterhood, a collective of people. People of color who come from underserved communities and giving those resources to them, but also building those breadcrumbs to the next generation.”

“Change doesn’t come from one initiative or one person or one entity. It comes from a group of people who are dedicated to doing these things. So we look forward to partnering in the future with more creators, more investors, more initiatives in different cities, different states. It’s not about starting something new, it’s about highlighting what people have already been doing and using the power of influence – the power of sports.”