Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown did not like Grant Hill’s recent comments about USA Basketball’s decision to replace Kawhi Leonard with Derrick White (and not Brown) on the men’s national team for the Paris Olympics:
Hill, the managing director of Team USA (which opened Olympic play Sunday against Serbia), said in an interview on “The Dan Patrick Show” on Friday that he’d spoken to Brown’s agent about the choice.
“I don’t know if that was before or after things went out on Twitter,” Hill said. “But yeah, I mean, I think this idea that there’s a conspiracy theory — I always love a good conspiracy theory, but it was really, truly a basketball decision. These are tough decisions, but having gone through this with the FIBA competition, you want to find the right balance and the right pieces on the court that we needed. And not to say that he wouldn’t have been good — there’s a lot of guys, you could go on a list of guys who are very capable and very qualified, but, for where we were, it was the right decision. And Derrick White, I think, will help us as we pursue gold.”
After the announcement, Brown’s posts on social media made it clear he thought Nike had played a nefarious role. At the ESPY Awards on July 11, he declined to elaborate. At summer league in Las Vegas on July 15, when asked directly if the shoe company had something to do with him being left off the roster, he told reporters, “I do, for sure,” adding that there will be “more stuff to come with that, but, as of now, I’m not going to comment on it.”
What Hill said to Dan Patrick about “conspiracy theories” isn’t much different than what he told reporters in Vegas shortly after the news on July 10:
“You get 12 spots, and you have to build a team. And one of the hardest things is leaving people off the roster that I’m a fan of that I look forward to watching throughout the season, throughout the playoffs. Guys who’ve been Finals MVPs, guys who’ve been a part of the program, guys who’ve won gold medals, guys who I respect, admire and enjoy watching. But the responsibility that I have is to put together a team and a team that complements each other, a team that fits a team that will give us the best opportunity for success.
“And, so, whatever theories that might be out there, they’re just that. But that’s my responsibility. And it’s tough. It’s tough to have conversations, tell people that they’re not on the team.”
In the interview with Patrick, though, he went deeper on the basketball reasons that led USA Basketball to White. Part of it, Hill said, was that, if coach Steve Kerr was going to play Bam Adebayo next to Anthony Davis in the frontcourt, then it made more sense to add a guard to the roster.
Here’s Hill’s full answer about the process of selecting White:
“I’m glad you brought that up. So, you know, we went to training camp, and we didn’t have KD, KD was out — Kevin Durant, sort of coming back from a calf injury. And then Jayson Tatum was late for arrival, he didn’t show up the first two or three days. So we ended up having to sort of play Anthony Davis and Bam Adebayo together. And we didn’t know if that would work. I think going into camp we thought let’s have three centers — much like in ’96 when we had Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson and Shaquille O’Neal — and we’ll rotate. All three of them are different and provide different things, and so we’ll have sort of a three-headed monster at the center position. But what we found, because we didn’t have the numbers those first few days, was that Bam Adebayo and Atnhony Davis can really play well together at both ends of the floor and at times might be our best defensive lineup. So we kind of stumbled upon something. We learned something about our group during those four days in Vegas.
And so when we pivoted off of Kawhi Leonard, we said, ‘OK, we got a little bit of a logjam now at the 4 position: LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Jayson Tatum, now Bam Adebayo — all these guys can play the 4 and we envision them playing the 4. And so, OK, let’s not bring another guy who might play that 3/4 position in; let’s bring in someone now who can really give us great defense at the point of attack.’ That was also a priority for putting this team together: being able to pick up full-court, guard and pressure the point guards of opposing teams. And Jrue Holiday might be the best in the world at doing this. But having some injuries that we had during camp, what happens if Jrue gets hurt? And so Derrick White might be the second best in the world at point-of-attack defense. So that was sort of the thought process. But we really learned about our team those days in Vegas and discovered something with Bam Adebayo and Anthony Davis on the court together that we really weren’t thinking about prior to our arrival in Vegas.”
Even before that, White was on USA Basketball’s radar. Back on June 14, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that he was a potential replacement for Leonard.
