Boston Celtics shooting guard Jaylen Brown has long been outspoken on issues that he believes are important, and the coronavirus pandemic hasn’t been an exception.
While much of the United States and world remains under quarantine, his home state of Georgia plans to begin reopening some sectors of the economy as soon as this Friday — a fact that deeply concerns the Marietta native.
Brown, a precocious leader as a vice president of the NBA Players Association’s Executive Committee at just 23 years old, weighed in an exchange with CNN’s Christina Macfarlane on Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s plan to partially lift the state’s quarantine.
“As a Georgia native, I feel uneasy that I have family and I have friends there that will be the first to go back out into society,” he explained. “I don’t want to see Georgia be … the guinea pig for what the economy is trying to do and start back up.”
“Our communities, our families, our neighborhoods are being affected,” he added.
Brown suggested the NBA needs to “get into the community, benefit people and try to make it better because America is having a lack of medical resources right now. And I think people of color are suffering the most.”
Why is the Cal-Berkeley product so interested in such things compared to many of his peers who, if paying attention to such things, largely keep to themselves?
“I just feel obligated,” Brown explained.
“Coming from the community that I come from, even though I might have raised my social mobility by being an athlete and being able to have a certain level of economics, I come from humble beginnings.”
The pandemic we are facing has humbled us all, but Brown is not incorrect to suggest not all citizens are facing the same reality in it.
Many cannot shelter in place effectively without support from the government because of their economic situation — and many of those persons happen to be people of color.
Public health officials are aware of this and the dangers of reopening too early more generally, yet many in government seem to be missing this critically important information, an issue not lost on Brown.
“When I watch President Trump and I watch some of these government officials, it just causes more anxiety and more panic, because I don’t feel like people are on the same page,” noted the fourth-year shooting guard.
“I think that we should be united in our stance. It’s not a political game.”
