Jaylen Brown confronts Stephen A. Smith over anonymous source: ‘It’s cowardice’

Jaylen Brown is getting ready to help the Boston Celtics defend their NBA championship, but not before defending himself from Stephen A. Smith’s unnamed source.

Earlier this year during the NBA playoffs, ESPN’s First Take discussed whether Brown was the NBA’s most underrated star. The conversation prompted an anonymous source to text Smith claiming Brown isn’t underrated, “he’s just not liked.” Smith relayed the text on-air and Brown later challenged him to state his source.

This week, Brown joined the First Take host on The Stephen A. Smith Show, where he addressed the unnamed source controversy. Brown made it clear that he wasn’t holding Smith accountable for the “not liked” claim, but did question his willingness to platform the unnamed source on First Take.

“I basically wanted to say to them that I think it’s cowardice,” Brown told Smith, regarding the source remaining anonymous. “I think historically, unnamed sources have attacked some of our greats. I/we are not responsible for what they lack and design…Whether they think I’m marketable or not, I walk with God, I’m gonna be me and stand with my community in this life and the next and that’s my journalistic integrity.”

Whether Brown is marketable can be debated. But whether he’s marketed cannot. Brown is a superstar on one of the NBA’s most popular teams and he doesn’t get the attention or endorsements you would expect for someone of that ilk. Because of that, Smith questioned why Brown considers it a negative when someone attempts to explain his lack of marketing opportunities.

“You could critique someone’s performance,” Brown said. “But then also if you’re attacking their character…they didn’t just say I wasn’t liked. They said I wasn’t marketable, they said I was arrogant, I carried myself with a certain demeanor and that line gets crossed between critiquing someone’s performance not liking them for whatever reason, and then attacking someone’s character.

“I think journalistic integrity requires it to go both ways. I never had a chance to respond or defend myself. One: Because they’re never gonna reveal themselves. And two: The damage is already done. So what I’m speaking to is the unnamed sources.”

Just as Brown doesn’t hold Smith accountable for what was said in the report, Smith has reiterated that the anonymous source was not claiming the Celtics star is unlikable, he was similarly just relaying information. Smith also maintains that journalistic ethics says you shouldn’t reveal a source. And that’s fair.

The problem, however, is that a journalist is supposed to clarify information and question the motives of any anonymous source. Maybe Smith did that when he read the disparaging report about Brown live on First Take. But in the moment, it certainly came across like Smith was just receiving and reading a text on live TV in real time, without doing any sort of due diligence on the topic.

[The Stephen A. Smith Show]