{"id":814953,"date":"2026-07-21T19:12:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T19:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/814953\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T19:12:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T19:12:18","slug":"grant-hill-explains-why-he-left-jaylen-brown-off-2024-olympic-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/814953\/","title":{"rendered":"Grant Hill explains why he left Jaylen Brown off 2024 Olympic team"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBoston Celtics\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTeam USA needed defense at the point guard position, Hill said.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\tGrant Hill speaks at Fanatics Fest NYC 2026 Photo by Dave Kotinsky\/Getty Images for Fanatics)\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\"Former\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKevin Garnett says Celtics will regret the Jaylen Brown trade: \u2018You don\u2019t break a great thing up\u2019\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCeltics announce full 2026 preseason schedule\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Team USA took home the gold medal<\/a> in basketball during the 2024 Olympics, but the way the roster was constructed raised eyebrows in Boston and beyond.<\/p>\n

Celtics teammates Jayson Tatum, Jrue Holiday, and Derrick White were all on the roster. Fellow Celtic Jaylen Brown<\/a>, who had won Finals MVP and Eastern Conference Finals MVP during Boston\u2019s 2024 championship run, had been left off the team.<\/p>\n

Plus, Team USA was already dealing with injuries to a pair of star players. Kawhi Leonard had a knee injury that ultimately forced him to withdraw from the competition. Kevin Durant was dealing with a calf strain, which caused the team to take a \u201cvery patient approach.\u201d <\/p>\n

Brown perceived the decision to leave him off the team as a snub and reported to Celtics training camp saying he was extremely motivated for \u201cobvious reasons.<\/a>\u201d USA basketball manager director Grant Hill said the injuries to Leonard and Durant caused the team to rethink the roster and go in a different direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cContrary to popular belief, I do like Jaylen Brown,\u201d Hill said during a recent episode of The Road Trippin\u2019 Show. <\/a>\u201cI love his game and things got difficult there with that team. So, in putting the team together, just to put some context, we had Kawhi Leonard penciled in on that team and he got hurt at the end of that season in 2024. He came to camp, he wasn\u2019t right, and so we had to pivot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holiday had already helped USA win gold in 2020, but considering his age (34 at the time) and the skill-sets of the other players at his position, there were concerns about what might happen if he were to get hurt. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

So, Hill brought in another guard from the Celtics who had plenty of familiarity with such a role playing both alongside and without Holiday at times. The choice was White.<\/p>\n

\u201cJrue Holiday was so important for us in that FIBA game. A point guard who can play his role, ball pressure, the whole nine,\u201d Hill said. \u201cSo, if Jrue got hurt, our point guard were [Tyrese] Haliburton and [Stephen] Curry, and defense wasn\u2019t necessarily their strong point.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, it was like \u2018let\u2019s bring in insurance for Jrue Holiday\u2019 and it was like Derrick White. So, that was the thought process.\u201d <\/p>\n

Hill said his failure to recognize the sensitivities around picking three Celtics teammates over Brown would cause was a mistake. He said he called several players who had been in consideration, but did not end up making the team, including Brown. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe mistake I made was that I started trying to interpret cryptic tweets, which I\u2019m not very good at,\u201d Hill said. \u201cWhen I announced the team, there were certain guys that I called before Woj and Shams broke it. I called [Damian Lillard], I called Jimmy Butler, I tried to call everybody because you never know when they\u2019re going to break it and you want to give guys the respect to hear it from me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown said he believed \u201cshoe politics\u201d were part of the reason he did not make the team. He tagged the official X account in a post saying \u201cthis what we doing?\u201d after the news broke that he wasn\u2019t on the team. He later told Sports Illustrated<\/a> that he \u201cfor sure\u201d believes his issues with Nike cost him a spot on the Olympic team.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne, I think sneaker industries, and I\u2019ve said this before, have way too much control over the basketball foundation,\u201d Brown said at the time. \u201cIn youth sports, it\u2019s the same. Kids are having to worry about even playing with Nike, playing well on the Adidas circuit. And they should just be working on developing their basketball skills. <\/p>\n

\u201cInstead, we\u2019re focusing more on shoe politics, and I think that is why the rest of the world has caught up. And if we don\u2019t do something about it, the next Olympics and the next global outings are going to look a lot different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hill said his conversation with Brown went well, but he also mentioned that he didn\u2019t appreciate accusations of Nike\u2019s involvement in Team USA\u2019s roster decisions. <\/p>\n

\u201cI called Jaylen, we had a great conversation. Unbelievable conversation,\u201d Hill said. \u201cAnd so, something got lost there and the implication that a shoe company \u2013 look you guys can criticize my leadership, you can criticize my ability to put together a roster. \u201c<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re in a role that I\u2019m in, you open yourself up to criticism, I can accept that. But, to imply that a shoe company told me what to do, now you\u2019re questioning my character and that was wrong.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t\"Profile\t<\/p>\n

\t\tKhari A. Thompson<\/a>Sports Reporter\t<\/p>\n

Khari Thompson covers professional sports for Boston.com. Before joining the team in 2022, Khari covered college football for The Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Miss.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGet the latest Boston sports news<\/p>\n

Receive updates on your favorite Boston teams, straight from our newsroom to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Boston Celtics Team USA needed defense at the point guard position, Hill said. Grant Hill speaks at Fanatics…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-814953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}