Role of a Lifetime

by James Brown

  He taught us to be role players, to put team above ourselves and our interests.

  Looking back, it really is impressive how well Coach Wootten instilled in us the value of team. I can remember my performance in very few individual games, but can remember every one of my teammates and the overall experience we had together. I may have received a Most Valuable Player award and made the all-tournament team when playing against Long Island Lutheran, but my recollection is that we trailed by a huge deficit, battled back in a charge that I played my part in, only to lose at the wire. It’s a tribute to Coach’s teachings that I have a nagging sense that I played really well and may have been recognized for that, but since the team didn’t win, it wasn’t ever something that I thought back upon.

  * * *

  During my last couple of years at DeMatha, the Washingtons from our neighborhood began attending our games. Their oldest son Louis was three years behind me, so they were clearly coming just to be supportive of me, and I appreciated that. Mrs. Washington always had the family remain after the game to greet me, and she said that Mr. Washington would protest that I was a young man with lots of friends, and didn’t need to be bothered with them. But I did. I was grateful for their support and glad they stayed at the gym to visit.

  Once, during my senior year, we went to play Johnstown Catholic High School in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. I was our returning All-American, and was averaging over twenty-one points a game, as I recall. I had a horrible first half. We came into the locker room and we were trailing. Coach Wootten walked in, looked at me, and didn’t say a word. It was a ten-minute halftime and he was silent for the first five minutes of that halftime, staring at us, staring at me.

  Finally, he took the halftime statistics sheet that he had been handed when he entered the locker room. “Let’s see…” he said, as he followed his index finger down the page, staring intently at the numbers. “Let’s see how my All-American superstar did in the first half. Let’s see: Brown. There it is.” His face lit up. “Great! Wow! Two points! One rebound! That’s great!”

  He looked up at me, the excited expression gone. “Tell you what, Mary Brown. Go out there and do that again the second half. Just double it for me. That’s all I ask. Just finish this game for us with four points and two rebounds. Can you do that for me? Just think, if she can go out there and play hard, she could probably go do that again, and finish with two rebounds and four points. Can you do that for them?” He gestured to the other players, assembled in the locker room, staring at me.

  His goal was not to demean, but to get under my skin and light a fire. And it worked. I still can hear him: “Mary Brown.” I went out in the second half and destroyed the other team. I had fifteen or sixteen rebounds in the second half and eighteen points. We won. But only because I had risen to my commitment to the others and met my obligations to the team.

  At the end of my senior year we played in the Knights of Columbus tournament. It was a tournament featuring the top Catholic schools from all over the eastern United States, plus some outstanding public school programs. My senior year we lost only one regular season game, to McKinley Tech at Cole Field House on the University of Maryland campus. They had a great team and beat us badly—by about fifteen.

  We had reached the semifinals of the Knights of Columbus tournament, and I was in the throes of college recruiting. I had been getting calls very late at night, keeping up with my studies, going on recruiting trips, and still working hard at basketball. I was worn out.

  Coach Wootten has always had a policy that you can take yourself out of the game when you are tired, and once out, you may put yourself back in when you’re ready. His thinking was that by allowing guys to put themselves back in will serve as an incentive for them to remove themselves when truly tired, knowing that they can go back in when they are ready.

  I took myself out of the semifinal game against St. Thomas More, with Ernie DiGregorio, who would later play at Providence College and in the NBA, as their star. I sat next to Coach Wootten, who always keeps the seat next to him for whoever just came out, so he can talk with us about what is occurring out there and instruct us as he sees fit. I proceeded to collapse into his lap. They took me to Providence Hospital, which is near my home, where I was admitted and spent the night, suffering from exhaustion. I was ruled out for the following day’s game, the championship game of the KOC tournament, against McKinley Tech.

  My teammates took my warm-up jacket and laid it over a chair that they had kept empty on the bench for the afternoon for me, and before a packed house, my team went on to beat McKinley Tech by twenty-two points and win the tournament. It was a tribute to how good we were, and how well Coach Wootten infused us with a sense of team, that we were able to win that game. There were those who thought that the thirty-seven point swing in our favor, simply by not having me in uniform, was too big to ignore—but I prefer to think that my teammates were talented, and maybe were playing hard for me as well.

  By the way, I startled everyone when I walked down out of the stands for the awards ceremony. I had managed to sneak out of the hospital and find a ride to the gym—I couldn’t stand the thought of not being there with my teammates and helping them celebrate.

  CHAPTER 4

  A HANDSHAKE AND HARVARD

  To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  My recruitment in 1969 came three years after the great social barrier-breaking event in college basketball: the 1966 National Championship game in which the underdog Texas Western squad and their all-black starting five beat the powerhouse University of Kentucky team, with head coach Adolph Rupp and their all-white starting five (including Pat Riley, president of the Miami Heat). So by the time I was being courted by colleges to play basketball, all schools were recruiting players regardless of their color—even Kentucky offered me a scholarship.

  All of us in the Brown family knew we were going to college. It seemed so normal at the time, though, to us that our parents, who did not attend college themselves, would have very firm expectations that we would attend college. They were committed to making sure that their children were educated to their fullest.

  As colleges started showing interest in me, Coach Wootten took me aside. Having guided hundreds of players through the recruiting process and in securing college scholarships, he wanted to make certain that I clearly understood all the aspects of the process, which was another world altogether from anything normal. As the first to go to college in my family, his advice was necessary and greatly appreciated.

  “When you visit a school,” he told me, “they’re going to show you the best of everything. They set you up, by design, in the perfect honeymoon situation. Therefore, you cannot commit when you are on campus. Leave the school and come home. If you still feel the same way after twenty-four hours, then commit.”

  Coach wasn’t kidding. I was wined and dined with every visit. Nice accommodations, lobster (which I love), and other fancy meals, none of which were an issue back when I was eighteen and six-five and two hundred and ten pounds. I have to be a little more careful with the drawn butter these days.

  During one of those visits, I decided to call Coach from Chapel Hill, home of the University of North Carolina. I had just finished a great visit with Coach Dean Smith, and loved the school, the players I had met and everything I knew about their program. I also admired Coach Smith—not only for the success that he had and the way he treated his players—but how well all of his ex-players were doing in various professions. He also was exemplary for his approach to civil rights. Although it was still a tumultuous time for race relations in our country, Coach Smith had already done a great deal to further the rights for all races in North Carolina, using his particular platform as head basketball coach at a university as respected as was the University of North Carolina. I told Coach Wootten that I wasn’t going to commit on campus, but UNC was where I wanted to attend school. And I told him why. We
agreed that I should tell Coach Smith that I was ninety-nine percent sure that I would attend, but needed to go home and speak with my family.

  When I got home, I found out that a letter from Harvard University had arrived, and was sitting on Coach Wootten’s desk. For my mom, dad, and myself, once that letter had been placed in our hands, any dilemma for the Brown family concerning which college I would attend had effectively and decisively ended. I had admired Bill Bradley, the Princeton great, who was then playing for the Knicks. The impact he had on me, being an excellent student and athlete, was tremendous. Who knows—if the Princeton letter had come first, maybe I would have narrowed it down between UNC and Princeton. As it was, Harvard was immediately elevated to a position on a par with Carolina. But, I knew in my heart Harvard would be my choice. I felt that if I could qualify for admission and enjoyed athletic success, not only would I be fulfilling my parents’ dream of getting an excellent education, but maybe it would encourage other African-American athletes to do the same. Mom was very clear—even if it meant that they had to take on additional jobs, or second and third mortgages on the house, which it turns out they did, as my siblings went to school—they would do whatever it took for me to be able to attend Harvard.

  Shortly thereafter, Harvard did what most schools do in wooing talent: roll out a high profile alumnus. Harvard had one that Carolina couldn’t match—Ted Kennedy. The senator contacted Coach Wootten and arranged for us to go to Capitol Hill to meet him. We visited with Senator Kennedy in his office, watched him cast a couple of votes in the Senate, and before the day was out, I promised him that I would visit Harvard before deciding.

  Red Auerbach, the legendary Boston Celtics coach and front office executive, was a great friend of DeMatha High and Coach Wootten. Even he weighed in on my college choice. Well, kind of. He grinned at me and told me, “James, remember this: there is only one Harvard.” He didn’t tell me where to go, but he did leave it at that. I got the message. From my mom to respected politicians to basketball executives—everything was beginning to look Crimson. My family remembers Ted Kennedy coming by the house and the impression it made on them. But as impressive as the Senator was, the two alumni who had the most influence on me were Clifford Alexander and Barrett Linde. Cliff was the former Secretary of the Army in the Jimmy Carter Administration and Linde, a wealthy Washington, DC, builder, really connected with me.

  It was still a tough decision because of how much I liked Chapel Hill, Coach Smith, and realizing that the University of North Carolina was an excellent school as well.

  In the meantime, Coach Wootten called me into his office. “James, how many schools do you plan on enrolling at next year?” I looked at him, confusion on my face. “That is the fifth call I’ve gotten from a coach—North Carolina, Maryland, Michigan—who tells me that you’re ‘99 percent sure’ that you’re coming to his school.”

  I grimaced.

  “James, you’re going to learn, at some point in your life, to tell somebody no.”

  Weeks later I was still wrestling with the decision. I lost track of who had contacted me and what I had said to whom because of the magnitude of the overall numbers, but my siblings have said that I was being recruited by upward of two hundred schools. Letters were coming in every day from all parts of the country, and I was still unable to decide.

  Mom and Dad never pressured me, repeatedly saying the decision was mine. Mom and Dad just couldn’t get past Harvard, though. None of us could. Coach Auerbach was right—there is only one Harvard. And Mom was very concerned with what college offered the most for my future. She taught me over the years about the value of education. “What if you break your leg and can’t play basketball again? If you go to Harvard, you’ll always have a great education as your foundation.” She was often fond of saying that “whatever you put between your ears, no one can ever take away.”

  In fact, Mom had a classic encounter with Coach Wootten one day during my tenth grade year. I was playing both junior varsity and varsity at the time, which I explained to Mom was quite an honor. “If it cuts into your homework time here at the kitchen table, it will be over,” she responded.

  One fateful day, it did.

  I didn’t return home from school when the streetlights came on, which had always been my appointed time to be home and seated at the kitchen table, doing homework. Mom called DeMatha, and reached an assistant basketball coach, who politely explained that Coach Wootten and I weren’t available, as practice had continued later than usual, and we were on the floor.

  Mom clarified the point. “You’re telling me that I can’t speak with my son because practice is going on, and further that he’s not home doing homework because of that practice? Please let Coach Wootten know that I’m sorry that he’s unavailable, but that James won’t be a part of the basketball program at DeMatha any further because of the conflict between practice and him getting his studies in.”

  After a moment’s pause, Coach Wootten came on the line. His assistant had re-examined the situation. “Mrs. Brown, I apologize. I agree with you—academics must always come first. James is on his way home, and this will not happen again.” To his credit, it was a rarity for this to have happened in the first place, and it did not happen again.

  She also helped me to understand the distinction among the scholarships that were offered. Because what Harvard was offering me was need based, all I had to do was to maintain good grades, and I would stay on scholarship there. The criteria for continuing in school depended not on my continuing to play basketball, but on the quality of my grades. If, however, I accepted an athletic scholarship at another school, and sustained a career-ending injury while in school, what my mother and father highlighted was the possibility that the scholarship could be revoked. They were wise to focus on that possibility, regardless of how unlikely it might have seemed to me. I was also still intrigued by the chance to do what Bill Bradley had done (at Princeton), an accomplishment I admired. He had graduated from Princeton in 1965, after a career in which he had been selected as a three-time All-American and had led Princeton to a number three final national ranking following the 1965 NCAA Tournament. He was named the top amateur athlete in the United States in 1965 and it was readily apparent, from Bradley’s college career and NBA career which followed with the New York Knicks, that it was certainly possible for another player to be no less successful on the court coming out of an Ivy League school.

  I wanted to be an inspiration. I suppose we all do in a way. In addition to every other reason my family had for me to attend Harvard—except for the possible exception of my brother Terence who thought it would be so cool to have a brother who was a Tarheel and therefore was still pulling for UNC and Dean Smith to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat on the recruiting trail—I wanted to be a role model to others, especially those younger kids who had followed my high school career. As a young man growing up in a very modest area of DC, who certainly was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, I wanted to be a role model for kids from similar backgrounds by showing them that they, too, could rise above their circumstances. Given that it was still the late 1960s, and the country was still wrestling with the aftereffects of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s tragic death, and the continuing civil rights movement, as well as the ongoing struggle in Vietnam, I thought that maybe there might be kids who saw my going to Harvard as something they could do, too. That the ticket to success was not just in having athletic talent.

  By no means am I a charter member of Mensa, and I didn’t perform particularly well on standardized tests. What I did, however, was work assiduously at my studies. Where it might take another student thirty minutes to grasp the material, it might take me a little longer. I wasn’t fazed, however, by that. I was willing to spend as much time as it took, and knew that I would eventually master whatever material was assigned. And when I ever had a momentary lapse in commitment, I just reflected on how hard my mom and dad were working to make this all possible for me.

  A
fter an agonizing and long period of introspection and analysis, the process finally resulted in my selection of Harvard. They offered me early admission, because of my grades and the situation I was in with my recruitment elsewhere, to allow me to effectively end the continuing recruitment process and put it all behind me. I accepted and said that I would attend.

  That’s when the letter arrived that threw our house into chaos. Any thoughts of being a role model in Cambridge were put on hold when I held in my hands the envelope with “UCLA” written on its face in deep sky blue and sun gold.

  “Mom, this is from UCLA. I have to go. I have to at least visit. Pauley Pavilion. John Wooden. It’s U-C-L-A.” I said it slowly, carefully enunciating each letter, as if she were having trouble with my spelling. “It’s the mecca of college basketball. They dominate college basketball—they’ve won two straight National Championships and four of the last five!”

  My mother was unmoved. My father, too, was completely unmoved. They sat me down. “James, you have given your word to Harvard. Your word means more than anything, son. You shook hands and said that you were coming—you cannot change your mind now. You’re going to Harvard.” That was that.

  I told UCLA that I was headed to Harvard, and went up to Cambridge to play for Bob Harrison. Coach Harrison was an NBA All-Star, and had played for the old Minneapolis Lakers, the Milwaukee Hawks, St. Louis Hawks, and Syracuse Nationals. He had come to Harvard a year earlier from Kenyon College, a program that he had turned around, and arrived with great expectations of doing for the basketball program at Harvard what had been done at Princeton and Columbia. My class came in with great expectations at Harvard, with the thought that we were going to put Harvard basketball on the same path to national prominence those other Ivy League schools had traveled. We were ranked the second-best incoming freshman class in 1969 (freshman couldn’t play varsity in those days), and a number eleven had our highest preseason ranking in school history the next year, when we were finally eligible to play. Instead, we were mediocre. My sophomore year, when we finished 11-3 in the Ivy League and had K.C. Jones, the Celtics great, as an assistant coach, was our best season. Coach Harrison was a wonderful person, knew the game well, and was a strict disciplinarian, but for whatever reason, athletic success didn’t work out for him, nor us, at Harvard. A number of people pointed the finger at him for our lack of success, but that was unfair. We had as much to do with the lack of success as he did. It was, after all, a team effort.