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Watch: Jaylen Brown reacts to having his high school basketball number retired
Brown returned to Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia, for the ceremony on Friday.
While in Georgia for Saturday’s game against the Atlanta Hawks, Celtics star Jaylen Brown made a special visit to his nearby high school.
Wheeler High School in Marietta held a ceremony to retire Brown’s high school basketball No. 0 while also speaking at the school’s Martin Luther King, Jr. assembly ahead of the holiday on Monday.
Brown, a 2015 graduate, entered the gymnasium to loud cheers and a standing ovation from students as he walked up to the podium.
There was a malfunction during the unveiling of Brown’s jersey on the wall, but someone eventually removed the cover to display the banner.
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“It was just fitting,” Brown told WSB-TV’s Alison Mastrangelo of the brief defect. “It was my high school experience all wrapped up into that one moment right there.”
Brown famously shared a post on Twitter in 2014, when he was a senior, about something negative one of his Wheeler teachers told him.
“My teacher said she will look me up in the Cobb county jail in 5 years .. Wow,” he shared on Mon., April 28, 2014.
“You don’t really forget instances like that,” Brown told The Athletic five years after he shared that post. “You use it as fuel and you move on.”
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When his No. 0 was successfully showcased, Brown had a huge smile on his face and pumped his fist as students clapped.
He told Mastrangelo that he always dreamt of having his number retired at Wheeler.
“100% did,” Brown said. “It’s always been a part of my mentality. Consistency and hard work has paid off. Always felt like I would be a star. But to be able to come back to my community is more important than anything.”
As a Wheeler Wildcat, Brown shone bright on the court in his final two years. He helped the team finish with a 27-6 record while averaging 24.1 points and 8.2 rebounds per game as a junior.
In his senior year, Brown led Wheeler to a win in the Georgia High School Association Class 6A State Championship in their 30-win season by making two game-winning free throws with 0.6 seconds remaining. That season, he averaged 28 points and 12 rebounds per game.
Out of high school, Brown was a five-star recruit, one of the best-ranked players in his class, and received offers from schools like Kansas, Kentucky, and UNC. He ultimately chose to attend the University of California, Berkeley, and played one season before being selected No. 3 overall by the Celtics in the 2016 NBA Draft.
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