Jaylen Brown is mad at the “media,” which is a common stance for the modern professional athlete to take.
Specifically, Brown wrote this on X on Tuesday: “Click bait is like flopping for the media exaggerating contact y’all be safe out here.”
Brown seems to be referring to the recent bulk of articles written across the sports world about his comments about Joel Embiid, in which he complained about Embiid flopping.
“(He) flops,” Brown said recently. “He know it. It ain’t breaking news. It is what it is.”
Brown did precede that by calling Embiid one of the best bigs in basketball history, but still — his comments weren’t going to be framed particularly gracefully when not long after having his season end at the hands of a dominant Embiid, he chose to whine about the officiating.
The Celtics star clearly saw the framing of his comments that he didn’t like and chose to complain about that, too.
One problem: Brown chose to air out all his grievances on a livestream. He was in control of the platform and what he said, and that’s the path he went down as far as Embiid was concerned.
This is actually a situation where not having reporters in the room might’ve hurt Brown.
No one asked him for his take on this. He just provided it.
And there was no one to ask for follow up, or clarification, or anything like that. He just kept on ranting.
Athletes take matters into their own hands because they don’t trust the “media,” and that’s their call. But then it really is in their own hands.
Websites will write about what they say when it’s newsworthy, and because the athlete didn’t want to instead speak to some of those same outlets directly.
They’ll never be able to fully control the messaging, particularly not on a livestream where there’s no way to edit something out or filter it.
Brown was speaking his mind. The sports world heard it and wrote about it.
Being mad about it now? He’s kind of missing the point.
