Boys Among Men: How the Prep-to-Pro Generation Redefined the NBA and Sparked a Basketball Revolution

by Jonathan Abrams

  Doug Collins found Brown distracted. That Jordan had hired Collins to coach the franchise represented something of a surprise. Years ago, a young Jordan had played under Collins in Chicago. Collins was once an excellent player himself and a teammate of Darryl Dawkins’s in Philadelphia. As a coach, he drove his players hard, alienating some, and possessed a drive to work and obsess over the game that few shared. A younger Jordan perhaps did not appreciate Collins’s compulsions. He did not interfere when the organization fired Collins in 1989 after leading the Bulls to their first conference finals in 15 years. In time, Jordan had come to appreciate Collins’s approach and wanted a passionate, knowledgeable coach for his Wizards. By then, Collins had come to accept that the young generation of players was hard to coach. He had enjoyed his time as a basketball analyst; he was regarded as one of the game’s best commentators. Yet he accepted the challenge in 2001 when Jordan beckoned. Brown’s cell phone went off incessantly during one of his first meetings with Collins. Collins asked Brown to turn it off. But Brown’s mind was already split between helping his family financially and accepting his newfound celebrity. Collins worried about the external factors tugging at Brown. He wanted Brown to concentrate fully on basketball and basketball alone. “You saw this young player who was six feet eleven inches, two hundred forty pounds, quick, could run, and you start thinking about all the potential for this young guy,” Collins remembered. “What happens is you get burdened with being that number one pick and all the pressure that goes with that.”

  That season, the NBA experimented with a pilot program to mentor younger players. A few teams hired recently retired players to help the organization’s younger players assimilate into the NBA lifestyle. Duane Ferrell was appointed to Washington. Ferrell had starred for Georgia Tech in college and retired in 1999 after playing several seasons in the NBA. To Ferrell, it seemed that a team’s veteran players were all about 32 or 33 when he had played. Suddenly, in the new NBA, a player could be regarded as a veteran yet only be a couple years older than a rookie. The Wizards boasted a cadre of young players, like Brendan Haywood, Bobby Simmons, and Richard Hamilton. They had all experienced college life. Ferrell ended up devoting the bulk of his time and effort to Brown. “All eyes were on him, the expectations were on him, the future of the franchise was on his shoulders,” Ferrell said. “There was a lot of responsibility and I don’t even think he could perceive of how people would view him being the number one pick.” The expectations of Brown had heightened beyond his control. With Jordan’s return, he could no longer be brought along and developed slowly. The reclamation of the Wizards was no longer a years-long project. Jordan’s window to win was short. In order for Jordan’s return to be a success and the Wizards to be competitive, Brown had to contribute immediately. “Michael didn’t have much time left in the tank to really make the Wizards respectable and profitable as an owner and as a player,” Ferrell recalled. “His window was very small, and Kwame needed to make a huge leap in a matter of months and he was just not ready for that.”

  Ferrell felt that Brown had grown up too fast. Brown was quiet by nature. It took time for them to develop a relationship. The team’s younger players, Brown included, occasionally tested Ferrell by committing minor indiscretions to see if word of them would trickle back to Collins, Jordan, or Rod Higgins. Ferrell, likewise, treated every misstep as a teaching opportunity, one where he could hopefully guide and influence his young charges. Ferrell came to learn of Brown’s splintered family and lack of male role models, that he had been looked on and talked to as an adult from an early age. Brown was mature in some aspects of life, but painfully naive in others. Things routine to Ferrell were utterly foreign to Brown. Brown once phoned Ferrell during the team’s training camp in Jordan’s hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina. “Duane, I’m hungry,” Brown said.

  “What do you mean you’re hungry?” Ferrell said. “You got your per diem.”

  “I’m hungry but I don’t feel like going anywhere,” Brown said.

  “Why don’t you just order room service?” Ferrell asked.

  “What’s room service?” Brown inquired.

  “Really?” Ferrell said. “You see that book in your room on the coffee table? Grab that and go through that and you can order something to eat. They’ll bring it to your room.”

  Joyce Brown had planned to relocate with her son. But Kwame Brown wanted to live alone and enjoy his independence for the first time. He moved into an apartment in Alexandria, Virginia, with John Richards, a law-student friend from Brunswick. Richards left shortly into the arrangement. At the urging of Arn Tellem, one of his associates, Richard Lopez, moved in with Brown. Lopez, like Ferrell, found that he devoted most of his time to helping Brown learn life’s practicalities, like washing clothes and how to shop for groceries. Still, Brown enjoyed his new life. He quickly traded the beat-up, borrowed car from his mentor, John Williams, for a Mercedes S500, even if he had little idea how to navigate Washington, D.C.’s confusing streets.

  During a scrimmage at his first training camp, Brown argued for a foul, feeling he had been unnecessarily hacked by veterans Jahidi White and Christian Laettner. The Washington Post’s Michael Leahy reported that Jordan approached Brown. “You fucking flaming faggot,” he said to Brown, according to Leahy. “You don’t get a foul call on a goddamn little touch foul, you fucking faggot. You don’t bring that faggoty shit here. Get your goddamn ass back on the floor and play. I don’t want to hear that fucking shit out of you again. Get your ass back and play, you faggot.” Jordan could be nurturing one moment and unrelenting the next. He would build people up only to strip them of their confidence, either through verbal jabs or by making them feel hopeless on defense. Jordan had acted that way throughout his entire career. It was his method of finding who could play through pressure. Brown, part of a younger generation unaccustomed to those types of verbal attacks, wilted. “Michael would push his buttons to try to get him going, but Mike did that with everyone,” Ferrell said. “He wanted to see who he could trust at the end of the game, so he would challenge you mentally, physically to see if you would break down. He would find out exactly who you are. Kwame didn’t have that kind of pride and venom that Mike had as a player. There was no one in the gym that had it. Kwame wasn’t the only one, but it was the simple fact that Michael wanted to test him, to see what he had in him.”

  In that training camp, Brown often looked lost. He was out of shape and sulked. He wore an expression of bewilderment and regret that Ferrell would remember for years. He looks like he doesn’t know if he made the right decision to come straight to the pros, Ferrell thought. Ferrell opted not to talk to Brown about the look afterward. Brown, he knew, could not retrace his steps. He was a professional now, whether he regretted the decision or not, whether he was ready or not. The learning curve would only get steeper, not easier.

  “Kwame, why can’t you get this concept?” an exasperated Collins asked during one practice.

  Brown always talked back whenever Collins tried tutoring him. The retorts only further frustrated Collins. Ferrell did not view Brown’s acts as disrespectful. It was just another sign that Brown had grown up fast and two-way conversations between adults had been normal all his life. “Why won’t you just let me play?” Brown asked.

  “Because you don’t know how to play,” Collins responded.

  Collins did not realize what a blank slate Brown was. He often instructed Ferrell to pull Brown to the side and talk with him as Collins continued instructing the rest of the team. “What’s wrong?” Ferrell asked Brown.

  “I’ve never played man-to-man defense before,” Brown said. The response shocked Ferrell. Man-to-man defense, the ability of one player to guard another, was one of the game’s staples and should be one of the first learning points for any player at any level. “Are you serious?” Ferrell asked.

  “Yeah, they would just tell me to stand in the middle and put my hands up and play zone,” Brown said.

  Brown had co
ncentrated on lifting weights and gaining mass after being drafted. He felt that he had to add muscle in order to battle his older competition. In doing so, he had sacrificed his quickness and agility, traits that had endeared him to the organization. The taxing training sessions took a toll on his maturing body. He hurt his back and his hamstring. Combined with his hand injury from Gainesville, Brown was behind before he had even started. Brown was a physical presence without any offensive go-to move. He was likable and wanted to be liked by his teammates. He shunned being the guy, but wanted to be one of the guys. But the constant criticism from Collins and Jordan caused his confidence to plummet. He felt that he had given them all the respect he could, yet got none in return. He was a statue when he did play, afraid to do anything out of fear he would be doing it wrong. “Kwame had great troubles in having great practices,” said Johnny Bach, an assistant coach under Collins. “He just didn’t have them. He had some people around him that came up from his hometown and tried to help him. Everyone tried to help him, but frankly, looking back, that added to everyone’s expectations.”

  Brown sprained his ankle in the loss to the Knicks during Jordan’s first game back and sat out Washington’s next four games. His goal during the games was not to dominate or even contribute. He just concentrated on doing his best not to look bad. The Wizards lost 9 of their first 11 games. Jordan would show flashes of his previous self, but it was obvious he was not the same player he’d been. His own struggles to confront athletic mortality and the overall haplessness of the Wizards bothered him incessantly. Jordan began ostracizing himself from his teammates and Brown, who had once looked to him as a mentor. Brown felt as though he was being blamed for all of the organization’s misfortunes. By midseason, stress caused Brown’s face to erupt in acne. He had trouble breathing on the court. Collins, who has said he would have approached Brown’s NBA introduction differently if handed a do-over, finally noticed the pressure on Brown and placed him on the injured list. As Brown’s early career trudged on, Ferrell continued to check in on him. Ferrell would notice beer cans scattered throughout Brown’s home when he visited. “C’mon Kwame,” Ferrell would say. “You can’t have cans of beers all around and be partying like this. That’s not going to do it.” Ferrell attributed it all to a spiraling downward cycle. Brown’s confidence wavered. His play tightened on the court. He played worse, causing him to play less. He lost more confidence.

  “You’re trying to get out there and play and live up to the demand of excellence,” Collins said. “But in the back of your mind, you’re telling yourself, I knew I wasn’t ready for this.” Brown’s relationship with Jordan continued to deteriorate. Charles Oakley, one of Jordan’s close friends and de facto body guards, came to the Wizards in 2002. Oakley had experience not just in the NBA, but in introducing young players to the league. He was in Toronto when Tracy McGrady first showed his promise and he played with Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry in Chicago during their rookie year. In Toronto, he told McGrady and Vince Carter that he would support them. In Chicago, he was outspoken when he felt that Tim Floyd had attributed the bulk of the team’s struggles to Chandler and Curry. He wanted to ease the way for younger players, but no one messed with Jordan in Oakley’s presence. Oakley watched as Brown one day swiped a cup of Gatorade from Jordan’s hands. Brown sat down, ready to drink from the cup. Oakley took it from Brown’s hands and proceeded to dump it over Brown’s head. “We were just dying laughing, because nobody was going to mess with Oakley,” Ferrell recalled. “Kwame just sat there and they all just laughed.”

  •••

  By the time Washington finally turned a corner as a franchise, both Michael Jordan and Kwame Brown had unceremoniously left the organization. Jordan could only replicate his past feats occasionally in the two seasons that spanned his return. The thought of his old self returning drove more fear into opponents than his actual abilities. He was crafty and had a jab step, the threat of him driving to the rim to make a defender backpedal, allowing him space to pull up for a jumper, became his primary offensive weapon. The Wizards suffered an all-too-familiar blowout in mid-April 2003, this time against the Philadelphia 76ers. Jordan had returned to the bench midway through the fourth quarter with just 13 points. Philadelphia fans, sensing it would be Jordan’s final appearance as a player, began chanting his name. Collins prodded Jordan to reenter for one final cameo. He needed that needling, but finally obliged. Philadelphia’s Eric Snow intentionally fouled Jordan, who stroked two free throws for the last of his 32,292 career points and checked back out to a deafening three-minute standing ovation. He waved with his right hand and grinned widely, embarrassed at the prolonged farewell. The moment provided his final worthwhile memory in Washington. Jordan had hoped to revert to his prior role with the franchise as president of basketball operations. To return as a player, Jordan had had to sell his stake in the team and relinquish his power. Abe Pollin declined to allow Jordan back in his former role. Jordan felt betrayed. He had drummed up remarkable interest in the organization and the team, only to have Pollin turn his back on him. In a final insult, Pollin offered to pay Jordan $10 million as a sign of appreciation. Their meeting devolved into a spate of name calling. After a brief respite, the relationship had come full circle to when Jordan and Pollin had clashed during the lockout.

  Brown did not last much longer as a Wizard. Washington finally qualified for the playoffs in 2005 under Doug Collins’s replacement, Eddie Jordan (unrelated to Michael Jordan). Brown called in sick to a practice and morning shoot-around in Washington’s first-round playoff series against Chicago. He was more upset than anything, having played a season-low four minutes in the previous game. That represented the final straw for Eddie Jordan and Ernie Grunfeld, the executive who replaced Michael Jordan. They suspended Brown. Renewed optimism had existed for Brown when the pair first inherited the team. Everything had clicked for players like Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady in their third NBA seasons. Instead, Brown suffered through an injury-riddled season. When healthy, he played unreliably and unremarkably. The outsized expectations, to his detriment, remained. When Brown checked into a game against Seattle in January 2005, Washington’s home audience uniformly booed. A beaten Brown told Michael Lee, who covered the team for the Washington Post, that he could not fault the reaction from the fans. “They knew I was injured,” he said. “They knew my foot was hurt. From a fan perspective, they see this big guy coming in, they’re like, ‘What is he going to do?’ If I was out there, I would’ve second-guessed the coach. I would’ve booed, too. I would’ve said the same thing.” Washington traded Brown to the Lakers in the summer of 2005. “It was a tough adjustment for him mentally,” recalled Brendan Haywood, drafted to the Wizards the same summer as Brown. “Coming in with Michael Jordan on the team, there was an immense pressure and [it] didn’t really work out well for him in D.C. If he would have went somewhere else, he probably would have ended up being a way better basketball player. He was super talented, one of the strongest yet quickest bigs I’ve played against.”

  If Brown’s career was judged by his lofty draft status, it collapsed far short of expectations. Even Tyson Chandler came to the conclusion that he himself had been better off not being drafted first. “Some of the stories that I heard Kwame had to endure and go through, I felt like it took a toll on him and ultimately his career, his confidence,” Chandler said. “It probably worked out best for me to be drafted second.” In the end, few players actually match the outsize projections of their younger days. Judged by a different standard, one of stability and longevity, Brown’s career evolved into a success. He rededicated himself as a strong, sturdy defensive player. He was not a star by any means and bounced around the NBA. Yet, he found a contract and somewhere to play into his 30s in a league tailored for younger men with constant turnover. “He relaxed because the heat wasn’t on him as much as he moved on,” Ferrell said. “I’m happy for him because I didn’t think he was going to last that long, to be honest.”

  Oddly e
nough, both Michael Jordan and Doug Collins later acquired Brown on their next teams. Jordan landed Brown in Charlotte, where he had become the franchise’s majority owner. “With Kwame, I thought as he got older and particularly when he was with the Lakers, he was a hell of a defender on those low-post scorers,” said Rod Higgins, who also joined Charlotte as its general manager. “When you come in as a high school player, you don’t know who you are. If his mind-set was to come into the league and say, ‘I want to be the next Ben Wallace,’ he probably could have been the next Ben Wallace. But when you come out of high school, you have all of these thoughts of what you think you should be. You might not ever be what you think you should be.” In 2012, Collins signed Brown in Philadelphia, where he had become coach of the 76ers. “As time went on, Kwame found his niche,” Collins said. “He had gotten to a point in his career where he had hung his hat on defending the post, rebounding, doing the things to help your team win.”

  Tyson Chandler, of the three lauded big men taken at the top of the 2001 draft, was the only one who came close to reaching his potential. He only reached that destination after struggling for years. Through it all, he came to believe that his efforts would eventually pay dividends. He left fantasies of becoming another Rasheed Wallace by the wayside. He concentrated on his defense, listening to Bill Cartwright’s instructions that the best offensive players were susceptible to bad games, but a defensive stalwart could successfully impact his team day in and day out.

  The Bulls hired Scott Skiles as coach in 2003. Skiles had little use for nonsense and became the type of driver Eddy Curry needed as motivation. Skiles had been a hard-nosed point guard as a player. He questioned Curry’s passion to play the game. A reporter once asked Skiles what Curry needed to do in order to improve his rebounding. Skiles famously and simply replied, “Jump.” For much of 2004–2005, Chandler and Curry became the dynamic duo that Krause once envisioned: Curry, the scorer, and Chandler, the defender and antagonist. “He’s always been a great defender,” Curry said of Chandler. “He was always a real hard-nosed player. Back then, I think we really fed off each other. What I lacked in defense, he picked it up and then some.” The Bulls improved by 24 games that season and qualified for the playoffs for the first time since Jordan left. Curry paced the team in scoring. An irregular heartbeat sidelined him before the playoffs. Doctors cleared him to practice, but the organization pushed for him to undergo DNA testing to assess whether he had a congenital heart condition. Curry declined on privacy grounds, even though the Bulls offered to pay him a $400,000 annuity for 50 years if the test revealed a defect that prevented him from playing. Before either side could resolve the issue, the Knicks traded for Curry. The dream of a devastating Curry-and-Chandler combination had ended before either turned 23 years old. Chandler lasted one more year in Chicago. His confidence had swooned. He often did not even look for his shot on offense. His scoring and rebounding both dropped precipitously. The home crowd occasionally booed him. The Bulls traded Chandler to the Hornets in the summer of 2006 for J. R. Smith and P. J. Brown. Chandler represented the last Krause pick on Chicago’s roster.