Jaylen Brown offered one of the more unusual windows into NBA leadership this week, explaining that he has memorized his teammates’ astrology and numerology profiles to better understand how to communicate with them. Brown said he has used both Chinese and Western zodiac signs, along with numerology, as tools to study individual personalities and tailor his approach inside the Celtics’ locker room.
Brown described it as part of a serious effort to become a better leader, and he even ran through examples, saying Derrick White is “Year of the Dog,” while Hugo Gonzalez is also a Dog, Payton Pritchard and Jayson Tatum are Tigers, and Ron Harper Jr. is a Dragon. Brown said those differences matter because each player responds to communication in a different way.
That detail says something important about Brown’s season. Leadership in the NBA is often discussed in broad terms, but Brown’s explanation pointed to something more specific: the work of figuring out what makes teammates tick. Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said that Brown has taken his off-court leadership seriously this year, especially when it comes to understanding how to push buttons, connect with teammates, and communicate more effectively.
Whether someone believes in astrology or not is almost beside the point here. The basketball value is in the intention behind it. Brown said he wanted to learn communication styles that work best for each individual, and he added that the process has helped him think more deeply about how to maximize the group’s potential over the course of the season.
