Jaylen Brown is the best player in the world — and the second-best on the Celtics

Welcome to the 2024 SAT examination presented by the College Board! This year, in an attempt to appeal to today’s youth, the long-essay prompt may appear strange to some readers. However, we believe it will help us more fairly evaluate all students. Thank you, and good luck!

PROMPT: Is Jaylen Brown the best player in the world and the second-best on his own team?

Just kidding, this isn’t the real SAT nor is it a dream triggered by repressed stress from years ago when you were applying to college. But when I become president of the world, I will make this the long essay question on every standardized test. Your ability to answer it represents more than your IQ or the effectiveness of curriculum; it unpacks your mental flexibility, your worldview, and your ability to think critically about basketball players that don’t make a lot of sense.

But it’s still a yes or no question, which means you could presumably answer, “no, he’s not. Why would you even ask that, you moron?” This response would score poorly on the test and is also objectively wrong. Brown is definitely the best player in the world, and definitely the second-best player on the Boston Celtics. There will be no opportunities to revise your answer.

In the interest of academic honesty, this article will act as an answer key, and hopefully also teach us why Brown is the most interesting player in basketball, and why we may never quite figure him out.

First things first, when answering this question, one must add the important nuance that Brown is only the best player in the world to some people. This by no means falsifies the answer, as shutting out people that disagree with you is a fundamental part of being alive. Politics, friend groups and nuclear families could not exist without this concept. But why only some people?

Well, in the suite of options for determining who the best player in the NBA is, three shine through the rest: league MVP, online-popular consensus, and NBA Finals MVP. Which one you subscribe to will depend on your fundamental opinion of how important winning is when answering this question. The league MVP and online consensus pick is currently Nikola Jokic, but he lost in the second round.

If you’re more old school or just refuse any data that isn’t “rings,” perhaps NBA Finals MVP would be your pick. This rarely matches up with the other two categories, but it can happen! In 2019, Kawhi Leonard grabbed the Finals MVP trophy on the Toronto Raptors and found the “best player in the world” award hidden inside it like one of those Russian nesting dolls. After that run, it was just undeniable. Saying the Finals MVP simply equals “best player in the world” isn’t a particularly sophisticated argument, but it kinda sorta almost totally always works.

Photo by Adam Glanzman/Getty Images

It’s a really effective argument to make, however annoying. Saying “the most important player on the team that won the Finals” is a really hard argument to beat, as anyone in the group chat who says there is something more important than winning is immediately clowned as a fake sports fan who should go back to Loserville.

Arguing for the importance of “winning” in sports is advocating for veterans in politics. Mom and apple pie. Sunshine and lollipops. No one alive dislikes veterans, and any candidate accused of mistreating them is branded as the biggest jerk imaginable. It might be a bit morally simplistic, but it’s definitely not wrong, so basing your worldview on “winning” is totally fine for this question.

So long as we’re being sufficiently stubborn, Jaylen Brown is the best player in the world when compared to all other NBA players. According to the history books, he was the most important player in the 2024 NBA Finals. That’s the most recent Finals, so bam-bam, thank-you-ma’am on part one.

Photo by Billie Weiss/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images

As for part two, yes, Brown is also the second-best player on the Celtics behind Jayson Tatum. Many, many, many people have told me, wrote me, texted me, commented-at me, called me or telepathically communicated to me that comparison is the thief of fun and that I should just “enjoy both guys” without worrying about which one is better. And just like the other 400 times, I categorically refuse.

That mindset is an outrageously boring way to look at sports. Simply living in denial about the need to make comparisons isn’t going to stop others from making them, and NBA history has shown that a coherent understanding of everyone’s role on a team is critical to success. Like it or not, “best player” is one of those roles.

I don’t wish to dwell on why Tatum is better than Brown, since I’ve made the same argument for six consecutive years and have practically no interest in making it again. Tatum is a more dynamic player with fewer limitations, and has proven that he can be the centerpiece of an NBA offense at all three levels while dominating the ball. Brown has done a lot of that, but has struggled with consistency, ball security and playmaking in ways Tatum simply has not.

There are arguments that Brown is better, specifically if you want to just throw my Finals MVP logic right back in my face. But I don’t find that as interesting when comparing two guys on the team that just won, and is much easier to falsify by saying Tatum missed out on the award by one vote. I also didn’t use a single statistic to prove that nor do I plan to, as I think a holistic understanding of a players’ game is more effective when trying to ask, simply, “who’s better?” as lots of data and numbers make Karl Malone the best player in NBA history which, like, is not true at all.

I also wonder if Brown actually wants to be the best player in the world or on the Celtics. I can go bananas on a Google Doc trying to convince you that he is, but in the immortal words of my friend Tom whenever we’d be watching a sporting event and his team would be on the brink of winning: “you gotta want it!”

Being the “best” is a lot like winning an Academy Award. It is supposed to all objective and analytical, but it’s really just a political campaign and a popularity contest. Tatum definitely wants it, and has made it clear for years he wants to go down as one of the all-time greats and to be the face of the NBA in a post-LeBron James world. He’s in Gatorade and SoFi commercials, already has three signature shoes with Jordan and went on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon to promote his children’s book. He’s an incredible basketball player and a public guy who wants to be famous. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s made him easier to see as “the best.”

But I always feel like Brown is skeptical of all that. He covers up the logos on his shoes, has his own custom apparel line and spends the summer traveling the world and seeing what the world has to offer. It hasn’t lent itself to the simplistic definitions of “the best” like Tatum’s story has, but maybe that’s even more admirable. Brown hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid of the NBA’s corporate structure, and refuses to be defined by the labels of others before him.

That’s why he’s my favorite player, both in the league and on the Celtics. He’s just the most interesting, the most individual and so unlike everyone around him. Brown is the best and Tatum is better. But I’ve seen Jayson Tatums before and will see them again. I doubt I’ll ever see another Jaylen Brown.