There are those who claim age is just a number, but that seems reductive. Age adds and subtracts – adds some physical wear and tear, subtracts (if you’re lucky) the sharp edges that can make your younger years a rough go. It also multiplies and divides – multiplies your blessings and (again if you’re lucky) divides what’s important from that which is less so.
I got to thinking about this the other day, when Hubie Brown was celebrated upon broadcasting his final NBA game, at 91. Whether as a coach or an on-air analyst, he had been part of pro basketball for over a half-century, and he came to be beloved for his pointed, trenchant observations, delivered in the accent that betrayed his Jersey upbringing.
Again and again, year after year, a broadcast would return from a commercial break and Hubie would intone, “We’d like to show you …” And then a replay would unspool and he would describe something that might have escaped viewers’ notice in real time.
Or, as the action unfolded before him, he would begin, “Uh-kay, here’s your pick-and-roll …” The requisite actions and reactions would follow. And he would be right on top of it, forever prepared, forever dialed in.
There was never any schtick to it, either. It was more like a tutorial: Pro Hoops 101, Professor Brown presiding. You always felt like you learned something, always felt enriched, something you can’t say after watching every color man.
As luck would have it, his last game involved the Sixers, on Feb. 9 in Milwaukee. Philadelphia, amid an aimless season, somehow lost 135-127 to a Bucks team that was without Giannis Antetokounmpo. And when the buzzer sounded various players – notably Paul George and Kyle Lowry of the Sixers and Damian Lillard of the Bucks – came by ESPN’s courtside outpost to wish Hubie well.
Referee James Williams also presented him with a game ball, which amused Brown no end, seeing as he could recall a day and age when he was such a wildman on the sideline that he and one of his contemporaries, Kevin Loughery, usually led the league in technical fouls.
The cameras continued to crowd around him. Play-by-play man Mike Breen, his voice cracking, continued with the salute. Hubie talked about his dad, Charlie (“the best man I ever met”) – how he told him years ago, as he grew up in Elizabeth, N.J., to “never give less than 100 (percent).” He talked about coaching high school ball in New Jersey, and about serving as an assistant at William & Mary and Duke before landing in 1972 as an assistant to Larry Costello in Milwaukee. That was a big reason, he said, it was “so meaningful” that his career should end there.
And maybe the best part was that he ended his farewell in true Hubie fashion: “We tried to come to every game prepared. We tried to be able to show you the difference between the weak side and the strong side, and why things happen on one side and not the other, and then who’s doing what, who’s not doing (something), so that we never underestimate the IQ of the audience. But we want to help improve (everyone’s understanding), that they can see the other side of the floor, where a lot of action is happening.”
Right to the end: We’d like to show you …
He was born in Hazleton in 1933, the only child of Charlie and his wife Anna, but moved with his parents to Elizabeth when he was 3. There they lived in an apartment that according to various profiles was only partially heated, and one that was hard by the railway tracks traversed by trains rumbling from New York to points south.
Hubie had discussed his dad’s influence often, notably in a 2007 interview with ESPN’s Roy Firestone. Noted how Charlie was laid off from the Kearny shipyards when Hubie was in eighth grade, only to resurface as a janitor months later at his son’s high school.
Charlie was by all accounts a taskmaster, pushing his son in baseball but also imparting life lessons. In that Firestone interview Hubie mentioned the manner in which his dad shamed him after the younger Brown shoplifted a two-cent pencil sharpener as a kid, and also said that his best advice was this: “No matter how good you think you’ve got it, no matter how good you think you are at the top of your game, always remember that you’re a half a step from the street.”
That seemed to fuel Hubie as he went off to play baseball and basketball at Niagara, the latter as Costello’s teammate. And it seemed to inform his approach as he embarked on his coaching career. After two years as a Bucks assistant he landed as the head coach of the ABA’s Kentucky Colonels, winning a championship his first season, then watching the league dissolve after his second.
From there it was on to the Atlanta Hawks, then the Knicks. And much later, in 2002, he spent two-plus seasons as the coach of the Memphis Grizzlies.
At every stop, he was driven and demanding. A 1979 Atlanta Journal-Constitution profile depicts him as a martinet, forever seeking more from his players – always more – and berating them mercilessly when they fell short of his expectations.
“Our people,” Brown told the piece’s author, Steve Oney, “have to be completely subservient to my goals. That’s it.”
Four years later, he criticized not only his players but his fellow coaches in a Sports Illustrated profile. Former players who had landed on the bench – guys like Billy Cunningham and Doug Moe – were “children” unworthy of their positions, he told author Bruce Newman. Stan Albeck, coach of the Nets at the time, was a “washerwoman,” seeking out the latest gossip.
Moe, no pushover, responded by saying Brown was “overrated,” and indeed he was en route to compiling a 528-559 career record. Moreover, Moe said, “Hubie’s very insecure and an average coach who happens to be great at promoting himself. Plus, I defy anybody to say his teams aren’t boring.”
A few years later, Jack McCallum assumed the NBA beat at SI. He has said and written on many occasions that his first meeting with Hubie was a memorable one.
“Your magazine,” Brown told him, “ruined my (bleeping) life.”
According to McCallum, Hubie never denied saying any of the things he was quoted as saying in that piece. It was just his impression that he had said them off the record.
But McCallum also said that Brown never held a grudge, that their subsequent dealings were always cordial and productive. And as the years passed and he moved on from coaching, a great many others have come to view him as the game’s elder statesman, as a keeper of the flame.
Hard to argue with that. Time has softened him, left us with the best of him. It has added and subtracted – tragically so, in his case; his wife Claire and his son Brendan have died in recent months. It has left us with an understanding that yes, there is a lot going on over on the weak side. That when it comes down to it, it’s not the weak side at all.