Patrick Sammon, Michael Andrew Find GoPro Belonging to NBA Player Jaylen Brown in Ocean
When swimmers Patrick Sammon and Michael Andrew retrieved a lost GoPro from the ocean in Hawaii, they hoped that posting the footage to social media might reconnect it with its original owner.
They didn’t expect quite so many people would instantly identify whose it was.
The video of the surfer on the footage happened to be Jaylen Brown, the former Boston Celtics star and 2024 NBA Finals MVP who was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers this summer. It didn’t take long for Brown himself, a chronically online poster and Twitch streamer, to find his way into the comments.
“As soon as we turned it on, we were like, ‘Oh, this guy looks super familiar,'” Sammon said in an interview that USA Swimming shared this week. “This guy is, like, seven feet tall, and there’s a mic boom over his head, so you could see he has a full-on camera crew. And we’re like, ‘Alright, we’ve got to figure out who this guy is.'”
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Sammon joked about free swimming lessons for whoever it was if they could reunite the camera with its owner. He posted the video on Aug. 28. Within a day, it went viral, Brown checking into the comment section to stake his claim.
Brown is no stranger to aquatic matters, and Sammon and Andrew wouldn’t even be the most decorated swimmers in his contacts if it gets to that. The five-time All-Star has long been curious about integrating aquatic sports into his routine. While with the Celtics, his trainer reached out to Boston College about incorporating cross-training into his routine, which led the now 29-year-old to work with new Boston College coach Dara Torres.