ÎÚÑ»´«Ã½

It raised eyebrows that Grant Hill, the ultimate decision-maker at USA Basketball, chose Derrick White. White is the third member of the reigning NBA champion Boston Celtics to earn a spot on the 12-man roster. Not among those three Celtics is the man widely considered to be the second-best player on the team, Jaylen Brown.

Actually, identifying Brown as the second-best player on the Celtics probably undersells his recent run of play. Brown, a three-time all-star and one of the NBA’s highest-paid players, is the reigning MVP of the NBA Finals and the Eastern Conference final. In the biggest games of a championship run, he showed up to perform.

That doesn’t mean his selection should have been a no-brainer. Team-building, in the lead-up to a two-week Olympic tournament, isn’t as simple as ranking the 12 best available players and piling them aboard a charter.

A team of stars is hardly a route to guaranteed gold. There’s only one ball, after all, and there are multiple roles that the architect of an aspiring champion needs to fill.

And choosing White is defensible on White’s defence alone. He has been named to the NBA’s all-defensive second team two years running. He also shot 40 per cent from three-point range last season, besting Brown’s 35 per cent. Anyone who has watched more than a smidgeon of FIBA basketball knows it’s difficult to arrive at an Olympics with too much three-point shooting. If you can add a three-and-D threat like White, it’s attractive.

For all that, Brown is the better player. And the idea that he wouldn’t fit into a role is at best a guess. He has been fitting in alongside Tatum for years, to largely successful effect. That makes it easy enough to wonder if there’s something more complex at play.

Brown has already signalled as much, using the occasion of White’s addition to the team to post messages on social media that appeared to question the decision, one of which suggested the power brokers at sports apparel giant Nike kept him off the roster.

Brown, a self-described activist who has been known to campaign for social justice, has previously engaged in a public quarrel with the company. When Nike founder Phil Knight decried Kyrie Irving’s sharing of antisemitic content on social media in 2022, with Knight insisting Irving had stepped “over the line� before the company announced an end to an Irving endorsement deal reportedly worth $11 million a year, Brown posed a social-media retort: “Since when did Nike care about ethics?�

Brown is a shoe-company free agent who has previously worn Adidas sneakers. And when he wears Nikes, which is not uncommon, he has been known to customize them, removing Nike branding or rejigging Nike’s “Just Do It� slogan with “Just Do Better.�

That’s not to say his choice of anti-establishment footwear kept him off the team. But Nike spends millions on Olympic sponsorship because it is keenly aware of the power of Olympic moments. When the vaunted 1992 U.S. Dream Team accepted its gold medals in Barcelona wearing track suits emblazoned with the logo of Nike’s arch-competitor, Reebok, star Nike brand builder Michael Jordan safety-pinned a U.S. flag over his shoulder to make sure the Reebok logo was obscured.

The prospect of Brown’s defaced Nikes gracing the Paris hardwood clearly would have amounted to a headache for everyone involved. Ditto the possibility of Brown voicing his opinion on any number of social issues at the Olympics, where athletes are encouraged to keep their counterestablishment views to themselves.

Don’t get it wrong: Team-building is tricky business. Even without the Nike feud and the activist’s spirit, there’s no guarantee Brown would have been a lock to be on the team. With them, there’s no denying it was easier for everyone to keep him off.