Jaylen Brown wants to revive Oakland, and he’s putting his money where his mouth is

The Celtics superstar is investing in a community that helped make him who he is today.

OAKLAND, Calif. — It took less than a year for Jaylen Brown to fall in love with the city of Oakland. In 2015, the 18-year-old basketball player, a freshman at UC Berkley, frequently ventured south from his prestigious university, eager to explore the nearby city.

Back then, Brown was busy preparing for the NBA Draft, studying up on the intricacies of the NBA so that he wouldn’t have to hire an agent, interning at a venture capital firm, and learning Spanish — among a long list of other intellectual pursuits.

He had just completed a standout freshman basketball season that led scouts to agree that he was destined for the lottery, but still worried that his intelligence could get in the way of his pro basketball career.

“Because he is so smart, it might be intimidating to some teams,” an anonymous assistant general manager famously told ESPN’s Marc Spears before the draft, adding that Brown “didn’t fit the mold of a so-called basketball player.” It’s a quote that has been recalled countless times — and one that spurred a national discourse around Black athletes and the tropes surrounding them.

Any concerns about Jaylen Brown, the player, were squashed years ago with his on-court play; he holds career averages of 18.9 points on 47.8% shooting for his career and was named both the Eastern Conference Finals and Finals MVP last season en route to securing the Celtics’ 18th championship.

So, 10 years after his formative freshman year, Brown returned to the city he credits for shaping him into the person he is today, just in time for his fourth NBA All-Star Weekend. The circumstances have changed, but at his core, he returns the same person.

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It’s a windy Friday afternoon in downtown Oakland, and the line to get into the Hall of Fame Sneaker Ball is halfway down the street.

Attendees were advised to dress in their fanciest attire, but with a fitting twist: they must also wear their favorite sneakers.

The room is largely filled with Oakland residents, a bustling atmosphere that features the city’s interim mayor, former NBA players like Baron Davis, and a slew of community leaders. The event is a celebration shedding light on the efforts of Oakstop, an Oakland-based social enterprise that, for more than a decade, has provided office space and event venues for underserved communities in the area.

In the back of the room is Jaylen Brown, the Celtics superstar who is just a few months removed from launching Oakland XChange. Brown’s nonprofit, co-founded with Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd, aims to empower historically marginalized communities in Oakland. The XChange will invest in budding businesses, providing them with both financial resources and technical support. There is both a material component, as businesses will receive no-strings-attached grants, and a technical assistance aspect of support; Brown will leverage his network to support Oakland entrepreneurs and creators.

On paper, Brown’s life is wildly different now; he’s no longer a raw but high-ceiling basketball prospect, instead, he’s a four-time NBA All-Star. He’s no longer a teenager who speaks about the racial wealth gap and the need to invest in underserved communities, he’s now a tangible part of the solution.

Brown is tipping off his All-Star weekend with a massive announcement that has nothing to do with basketball: Oakland XChange and Oakstop have purchased a three-story building that they will transform into a state-of-the-art business incubator for underserved businesses and creatives.

The building, which offers more than 25,000 square feet of floor space for businesses, is on top of the 19th Street BART Station, the most trafficked BART station in the entire Bay Area. That location is intentional; the goal is to ensure the incubator is as accessible as possible.

“The overall idea is that you have a building that simultaneously houses nonprofits that can provide training and education and learning to organizations and individuals,” said Trevor Parham, Oakland XChange’s executive director. “But then you also have office spaces that can house the folks that are building those businesses.”

Image courtesy of Oakstop

The endeavor is a partnership between Oakstop, Brown, and Kidd. From the jump, it was critical to Brown that his work elevated the efforts of long-standing, on-the-ground community groups — an effort that Partham has long led.

“A lot of the things that I’m doing, it’s not starting from scratch, it’s about aligning with people who have been doing the work,” Brown told SB Nation. “Oakstop has been doing the work for years, trying to develop areas in the community, give resources, incubator spaces to build ideas — they’ve been doing that for years. That’s been consistent here in Oakland. Being able to partner with people who are doing the work, it’s a better strategy than starting from scratch.”

Kidd, an Oakland native, said last month that joining Brown in this venture was a no-brainer.

“I was moved by what he was trying to do, and wanted to be a part of that,” Kidd said. “His vision of helping others is like no other.”

It was an especially unique collaboration because it came just a few months after Brown’s Celtics beat Kidd’s Mavericks in the Finals.

“Being able to do something with J-Kidd — we just competed in the NBA Finals,” Brown said at training camp. “For him to put that aside and be able to put community first was pretty awesome.”

On this particular Friday, as he addresses the jam-packed room, Brown is noticeably under the weather. He apologizes to the attendees for his monotone voice, but promises to power through his speech.

“We are invested into the community,” Brown declares, summoning raucous applause.

Image courtesy of Oakstop

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After he signed his historic 5-year, $304 supermax contract, Jaylen Brown vowed to bring a Black Wall Street to Boston to help rectify the city’s racial wealth gap.

“I want to attack the wealth disparity here,” he said in the official press conference announcing his historic extension.

The following summer, he followed through on his word, launching Boston XChange in partnership with Jrue Holiday, and his wife, U.S. soccer legend Lauren Holiday. That nonprofit invested $105,000 in ten Black-owned businesses, while also providing them with office space for three years and mentorship support from institutions like Harvard and MIT (Jrue and Lauren Holiday have long spearheaded this type of investment work in the cities where they’ve resided).

But, though Brown’s initial stated goal was to give back to Boston, he knew of another community that could benefit from significant investment: Oakland, a city he often frequented his freshman year.

“It was a very great year that I spent here,” Brown said. “For me, it really shaped and defined who Jaylen Brown is and who I wanted to be, and how I wanted to go about utilizing myself and my platform for the rest of my career.”

Oakland’s racial wealth gap is as extreme as any city’s; the median household income for African-American households is $37,500 (compared to $110,000 for White families). And, in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the city has dealt with a rise in shuttered businesses, as well as the departure of its three professional sports teams: the Warriors (relocated to San Francisco in 2019), Raiders (moved to Las Vegas in 2020), and A’s (who have temporarily relocated to Sacramento).

“They’ve taken everything away from us,” said one Black Oakland resident, who preferred to remain anonymous. “This city is gone as we know it, and no one is paying attention.”

Bucks guard Damian Lillard, an Oakland native himself, was similarly candid about the city’s dire current situation, particularly when it comes to the mass exodus of its pro sports teams.

“It’s not looking good,” Lillard said at All-Star weekend. “I think it’s still fresh. The Raiders have been in Vegas for a couple of years. This past season was the last one here for the A’s. The Warriors have been in San Francisco, what, four or five years now? I think it’s still fresh. It’s hard to see where it goes from here. How do you recreate that and how do you bring that type of life back into the city?”

Brown doesn’t have all the answers. But his philanthropic efforts are a step toward investing in a community that desperately needs it.

“We know what happens when it [Oakland] is forgotten about,” Brown said. “We know what the agenda is, and we’re going to put up a real fight. I’m here to fight with you guys.”

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After giving his speech at the Sneaker Ball, Jaylen Brown visited McClymonds High School, the school that Celtics legend Bill Russell attended in the 1950s.

Russell, a civil rights icon who won 11 championships in Boston, is someone that Brown has routinely gushed about over the years.

“I plan on continuing to walk in his [Russell’s] light,” Brown said at an October ceremony that renamed Boston’s North Washington Street Bridge after Russell.

In addition to touring Russell’s high school, Brown visited a slew of museums on Friday afternoon, including the Black Panthers Museum, which chronicles the history of the revolutionary African American Black Panthers movement that was founded in 1966 by two college students in Oakland.

Despite his time in the city being relatively limited, there is something that Brown has always loved about Oakland — its rich history, its people, and its culture.

“It became like a second home,” Brown said. “A lot of things I learned the year that I was there, it’s built the foundation for everything that I’ve done since — MIT, Harvard, my activism, everything. It’s great to come back here and see some familiar faces, but just embrace myself in the community as well, with the people that need it the most.”

While the NBA held a few All-Star events in Oakland’s Oracle Arena, all of the main events were held at Chase Center in downtown San Francisco. SB Nation attended all of these events, and it was notable how Oracle Arena’s open All-Star practice on Saturday not only drew more lively crowds than any of the weekend’s festivities — but all of the actual games (Rising Stars game, All-Star game) and competitions (Dunk Contest, Three-point contest, Skills Challenge) that were held at Chase.

The move away from Oracle to Chase was a business decision, Brown acknowledged. But, in many ways, it’s symbolic of the larger lack of investment in the community.

“All of this is intentional — to push people out, and push other people in,” Brown said to the event attendees of the broader trends surrounding Oakland. “Our goal is to slow this down, or actually prevent this. The bad news is that it’s going to take a lot of work, but the good news is that we’re prepared to fight.”

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Jaylen Brown has long rejected the premise that his off-court pursuits would interfere with his play.

“What is the ‘so-called mold’ of a basketball player?” Brown said at All-Star weekend in 2018 when asked about the infamous draft reports that questioned him. “I challenge whoever has the ideology of this ‘so-called’ basketball player, I challenge them to come out and say what that is.”

Needless to say, there is no such mold. And, despite some early-career struggles, today, Brown is the most accomplished player selected in the 2016 NBA Draft.

Still, he embraces doing things differently.

So, while most All-Stars began their weekend with various brand events around San Francisco, Brown opted to tip his off at a luncheon in the heart of Oakland, recognizing the power of his platform, and the impact of aligning his name and his pocket book with the causes he believes in most.

“A lot of people have already put a lot of work into the community — they just need the voice, the awareness, and the attention,” he said. “That’s what my job is, using my platform to redirect the attention, the focus, to places that get forgotten about. I’m here to shed that awareness, to keep inspiring people to keep fighting.”

Today, Brown is a lot of things: the signee of (at the time) the largest contract in NBA history, a household name with a massive social media following, the Celtics’ vocal leader, the vice president of the NBPA, and the founder of a sneaker and apparel company, 741 Performance. He launched his own shoe company this past summer so that he could be informed enough about the industry to educate younger players who might want to do the same.

“I did that on purpose, so I could be able to explain to the next generation what it takes, how much time it takes, how much money,” Brown said. “I’m very, very informed, and I can’t wait to share with the next generation.”

Brown’s relentless pursuit of off-court endeavors has long impressed those closest to him.

“Jaylen makes me just a better person because of his passion to just go after stuff,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said last month. “He wants to take on everything. He wants to be just as impactful off the court as he wants to be on the court.”

But at his core, though he is far more accomplished at 28 than he was at 18, Brown returns to northern California the same guy who left a decade prior: a gifted basketball player with an unwavering vision of wanting to advocate for the most vulnerable in society.

“I think that’s why I was born,” Brown said.