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Jaylen Brown earned the NBA Finals MVP award after the Boston Celtics steamrolled the Dallas Mavericks to win the championship, but hardly anyone has begun calling Brown the league's best player. But Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, often in consideration for that title himself, said he thinks Brown is the NBA's top player at the moment.
Throughout his career, Antetokounmpo has sidestepped labels that would indicate his status as the best player in the NBA. When he won MVP, an award he earned in 2019 and 2020, Antetokounmpo said that no one should call him MVP until he wins a championship. And when he led the Bucks to their first title in 50 years in 2021, Antetokounmpo asked fans not to call him MVP until he won another title.
That hasn't happened yet, but after the Celtics' dominant run to a ring, Antetokounmpo has named Brown the best player in the league.
“I feel like the best player is the guy that wins a championship, wins it all, and [is] the best player on his team,” Antetokounmpo said, via Complex Sports. “So the best player in the NBA, probably, I would say Jaylen Brown. Because you cannot say you're the best player if you’re on a team who didn’t win. It doesn’t matter if you got the MVP or you’re All-NBA. If you don’t make your team win, you’re not the best.”
Giannis Antetokounmpo doubles down on NBA's ‘best player' argument
Although Antetokounmpo may get flak for the choice, considering the presence of Nikola Jokic, whose Denver Nuggets won the title in 2023 and has won three of the last four MVPs, the ‘Greek Freak' has maintained relatively consistent in recent years on the topic.
Going into the 2022-23 season, Antetokounmpo said that the Golden State Warriors' Stephen Curry, who had just led his team to a fourth title in eight years and earned his first Finals MVP honor, was the best player in the NBA at that time.
“I think the best player in the world is the person that is the last one standing, the person that takes his team to the finish line and helps them win games and become champion,” Antetokounmpo said at Bucks media day in 2022. “Two years ago when we did that, yeah, when I was sleeping in my bed, I was like, ‘Ah yeah, maybe I’m the best player in the world.’ But now, no. In my opinion, the way I view it, the winner is the best. The guy who wins is the best. I believe that the best player in the world is Steph Curry until the next player [wins].”
While many still consider either Antetokounmpo, Curry, Jokic, Joel Embiid, or Luka Doncic the best player in the world, the logic behind Antetokounmpo's choice is not unpopular.
When Antetokounmpo led the Bucks to a title, despite a vocal contingent of Kevin Durant backers, it was not a controversial opinion to say the Bucks star, who scored 50 points in the title-clinching win in the NBA Finals, took the title of the league's best from LeBron James, whose Los Angeles Lakers won the championship in 2020. Before that, Kawhi Leonard led the Toronto Raptors to their first championship, drawing praise as one of the most clutch superstars of all time. Curry and Jokic were similarly anointed as the rulers of the NBA after their respective teams won championships.
However, Brown has yet to get the same level of respect, in large part due to the overwhelming talent of the Celtics' roster and the fact that many believe Jayson Tatum, Brown's teammate, is actually the best player in Boston.
Whether that means anything to Brown, Tatum, or any other contenders remains to be seen, but after a blowout win against the New York Knicks in the NBA season opener, the Celtics seem well-equipped to repeat as NBA champions.
