Jaylen Brown was fresh off a triple-double to help his Boston Celtics beat the Golden State Warriors, but most of the talk after the game was his continued battle with the City of Beverly Hills.
The issue comes from an incident during All-Star Saturday, when an event at the home of Oakley Sunglasses founder James Jannard was shut down by police. In a video posted to his Instagram account, Brown is seen going back and forth with a police officer who shut down his event. In the video, the officer told Brown that a permit for the event was denied. Brown was adamant that the permit wasn’t required and the event was simply a panel on culture and leadership. He said in the video that he felt he was being targeted.
It’s something he repeated on Thursday night in San Francisco.
“There's no other way to really look at it. I don't know for what reason,” he told reporters. “We weren't doing anything that was out of the norm for what goes on at All Star Weekend. I think it's evidence that we were being targeted. And then they put out a half-assed apology that I'm not accepting.”
Brown says his team sent him the apology, which the city issued via Instagram. It reads, in part, “Upon further internal review, the City has determined that its prior public communication contained inaccurate information. Specifically, no permit application was submitted nor denied for the event and the residence does not have any prior related violations on record. The City takes full accountability for the internal error that resulted in the inaccurate statement being distributed and is working to ensure it does not happen again.”
However, Brown was upset with a later passage in the apology that read, “City staff observed circumstances that are believed to be City code violations and for that reason alone, the event was ended.”
He took strong exception to that.
“For them to come back and be like, ‘Oh, we messed it up. Like, Oh, we assumed, based off biased assumptions, and whatever the case may be, and we were wrong, but we would have shut y'all down anyway … it’s some bulls--t,” Brown said. “It is some complete bulls--t. And I got to speak for those who've had to deal with that bulls--t, probably in the past. I don't know what to say, like, I'm extremely offended. My team didn't do nothing wrong. We just was trying to have a good All-Star break, my first time being a starter, and it just leaves a bad taste in your mouth, for sure.”
Brown hinted that he lost $300,000 staging the event, and that celebrities, athletes, and social media influencers were all part of a “brand activation.” In a statement issued before the game via his Twitter account,Brown said “we remain open to a constructive resolution with the City of Beverly Hills.”
That, combined with his question about resources and partners, suggest he’s looking for something significantly more than an apology. Brown was asked directly if he was planning any legal action against the City of Beverly Hills, but at this point, he said “I’m not sure.”