Role of a Lifetime

by James Brown

  These were politically and socially challenging times—the Vietnam War, the happenings at Kent State and other campuses, the Black Panthers—and I’m of the impression that we didn’t handle that transition as well as we might have under different circumstances.

  Basketball wasn’t a complete loss as a member of the Harvard Crimson. There were some good memories, mixed in among the general feelings of unfulfilled potential. My sophomore year I was surprised by a visit from our neighbors the Washingtons who drove from DC over to Annapolis to see us beat the Naval Academy. It was a special treat for a neighborhood family to show up. They were awfully kind to show up, time after time, whether in high school or college, to support me.

  I remember two games from my junior year that stand out in particular. One was a game we played at Boston University a few miles away from our campus in Cambridge. BU had a couple of players who were also from the Washington, DC, area, so it had somewhat of a hometown rivalry feel for me. That was probably my best individual game, as I was in a zone all night, scoring thirty-six points in a 104–77 win for the Crimson. At that time, I was not a great, consistent outside scorer, but I was shooting and scoring from all over the court. It was one of those nights when it seemed that I could take three or four steps across midcourt and shoot—and it would go in. I say “one of those nights,” but come to think of it, that was probably the only night of my life like that! Long arching jumpers from all over, and nothing but the bottom of the net. And those thirty-six points came at a time when college basketball didn’t have the current three-point line, either.

  Of course, with the outfit I chose to wear for the trip to Boston University that day, I had no choice but to play well. We went over to BU’s gymnasium and walked around campus for a while. You couldn’t miss me. The movie Super Fly had just been released that year, and I showed up on BU’s campus wearing a white leather full-length coat as if I had stepped right out of the movie. However, to make the coat truly classy, I had selected one with gray faux fur around the hem and the collar. It looked like something Clyde Frazier, the New York Knicks point guard would wear, only he’d have real fur, of course. And, naturally, a hat to match. Did I mention the red, zip-up boots, and gray bell-bottom pants? If you’re going to do it, do it up right, from head to toe. It really made a statement. I’m not sure what the statement was that I was trying to make. And I shuddered later wondering just what that statement was that I was making to the Harvard alumni who traveled across the river to see the game.

  It was certainly a different take on the fur coats usually being worn at Harvard games.

  The other notable game from my junior year was the one when Oral Roberts came to play at our home court, which was located on the fourth floor of the Indoor Athletic Building (the IAB, we called it, out of sheer Harvard creativity). A capacity crowd of 1,600 was in attendance, and we played a game for the ages. Unfortunately, it ended up with a 100–99 Oral Roberts victory.

  My Harvard experience was outstanding and memorable; our lack of success on the court was my only regret—it still pains me to think of our struggles, after the promise with which we entered. We entered with a couple of high school All-Americans and several All-State players, but we could never put it together to turn the program around. I wish I had displayed the same work ethic that I applied both before and after college. Later, after I moved into broadcasting, I had the opportunity to speak with Hubie Brown and Chuck Daly, who were coaches at Duke University and the University of Pennsylvania, respectively, during the time I attended Harvard. Each of them later went on to great success as coaches at the NBA level. They told me how they would get their teams ready to play us, telling their players that we were a team full of radicals. They exhorted their players not only to win for Duke or Penn, but for the entire establishment of the United States and all that it stood for, as we—Harvard—stood on the side of chaos and anarchy. Whatever works, I suppose. I asked Coach Brown and Coach Daly if they realized they were talking about Harvard (sure, it was a chaotic time) but it was Harvard. The administration at Harvard was hardly going to let anarchy reign. Hubie and Chuck both smiled and shrugged, indicating agreement, but a shrug that also said they would say and do whatever it took to motivate their teams to beat us, which they did.

  My time at Harvard was significant for another reason, though. A reason that would continue from then to now to impact my journey toward the person God wanted me to be. At the time, in addition to fielding all of the challenges of adjusting to college sports and struggling with the off-court challenges on campus which continually seemed to infiltrate from those affecting our society, I was searching spiritually as well. We were good, solid kids, great neighbors, in a good household. My parents’ example of how they lived their lives was my yardstick—and as I found out through the years that would follow my childhood—was a good example to emulate. But I found myself inwardly searching for meaning to my life when I was off at college. It was at once an uncomfortable feeling, yet one I knew was causing me to head in a better direction. I remember in Cambridge being drawn to a particular church near campus. I was attracted to the building, I think, more than whatever was going on inside. I felt a lure, and would attend occasionally, but like a map without a legend, I never fully grasped and applied what was being conveyed. I felt a pull and tug on my soul, but I didn’t really respond. But the tug continued. Francis Thompson wrote a poem, later edited into a song by Michael Card, called “Hound of Heaven,” portraying God as always following us, always after our hearts, always wanting to have a personal relationship with us. He was doing that with me at Harvard. But I was still running—searching, I thought. I had not fully surrendered in every aspect, or in every area of my life. But I was heading in the right direction, and even though I wasn’t sure what was happening—I felt comfort in where I was going.

  I had arrived at Harvard with so many accolades and didn’t have the really strong figure that Coach Wootten had been to harness me and my complacency, and I think I succumbed to all the adulation that came from being an athlete on campus. Even though I had felt I wanted to be a role model to the kids in the neighborhood, I never fully understood that the position I had been given as a college athlete was a platform to influence everyone around me—not just those neighborhood kids—for good or otherwise. I hadn’t yet come to a full realization of what it meant to follow Christ and put others first, so I wandered spiritually without a clear direction for an uncomfortably long period. I hadn’t yet realized that the platform I had been given was from Him, to use for His purposes, to influence and positively impact others.

  Between the times of unrest on campuses and the struggles we all had trying to find athletic success, we simply never fulfilled our full potential as a team. I realized again the burden of potential and the reality of its being as much of a curse as a blessing. At the end of the day, however, the ultimate responsibility lay with me. I knew from high school what it took to be successful. Players are made in the off-season, but when guys from other schools were working all summer getting better, we weren’t. We had plenty of excuses available, including those who wanted to argue that the academic course load made it impossible to enjoy sustained basketball excellence at Harvard, but I disagree. We were the problem. Even with all of this I was still hopeful for a career in professional basketball.

  A good memory from those times was getting to see my family. My brother, John, attended Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts, just south of Boston. The way my sister tells it, Mom told Alicia that she could go to any school she wanted to—as long as it was in Massachusetts. She chose Emerson College in Boston, which meant that by my senior year, three of us were in school in Massachusetts. What was important to my Mom was that my brother and I could watch over our younger sister. For my youngest brother, Everett, however, who was still at home, this meant a significant number of eight-hour drives with Mom and Dad from DC to Boston to visit us and to see our basketball games. Although he enjoyed being in the locker room
and going to the games, Everett said that he had had enough of Boston by the time the three of us finished our Massachusetts educations. I’m not sure it was really anything about Boston as much as the numerous long trips—which he wouldn’t miss—that led to Everett’s feelings about the area. (Terence, who also was still at home with Mom and Dad and Everett, was so involved in high school athletics and other activities that he often wasn’t able to come.) I have always enjoyed having my family nearby, even if it took two of them attending schools near mine, and numerous trips for the others to make it happen. I always felt a bit incomplete when they weren’t nearby, but that’s the way I have always felt about family and still do to this day.

  It made being so far from home much more tolerable. As it was, those four years marked the only time I would live outside of the DC area.

  But those times in Cambridge were also times of transition for me. Times of both failing to live up to expectations and learning again why that happened and how not to let that happen again, and they were times of the beginnings of a deeper search for the person God had created me to be. Significant times for many reasons.

  And at the end of it all, one other memorable moment occurred. I got my degree—from Harvard University. My parents would have settled for nothing less.

  CHAPTER 5

  REBOUND

  Thou wilt show me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

  Psalm 16:11 (NIV)

  I signed my forty-thousand dollar a year contract with the Atlanta Hawks—complete with a two-thousand dollar signing bonus, as I recall—and headed off to training camp in Savannah, Georgia. Over the course of that long hot summer, Pete Maravich and I got to be great friends during all the activities of the camp. Not only did Pistol Pete take me under his wing on the basketball court, but we both shared a love of the martial arts, and on weekends we would go to whatever Bruce Lee or other kung fu movies were playing in the area.

  Pete and the other star of the team, Lou Hudson, were very complimentary of my game on the court and continually encouraged me to just keep working hard, keep my nose clean and stay out of trouble—they obviously didn’t know my mother who had already made all of that crystal clear to me for the last twenty-two years. The guy I was competing with for the final roster spot had not practiced or played nearly as well in camp—in my very objective opinion, and so right up until the moment of my release I thought I would be the guy filling that twelfth roster spot going into the exhibition and regular season.

  The last time I had lived at home, I had been packing up, readying myself for a life at Harvard and whatever was beyond. I knew that a season of my life was coming to an end and that I would, more than likely, be living elsewhere from this point forward. Now, though, I had unexpectedly returned home after being released by the Hawks, with no idea what the future might hold. I certainly had no desire to go outside and run into the Washingtons, the Smiths, the Miltons, the Wallaces, or anyone else in the neighborhood.

  And so I just hid in my old room. My brother John was still off at college, but my other brothers Terence and Everett, as well as Clifton, were all at home. We had all shared a bedroom growing up, the four of us boys. It was a three-bedroom house that we lived in, and my parents used one, my sister had her own, so the four boys had two sets of bunk beds. And one room. It had always been cozy before—regardless the size, and it was small, four boys sharing it would tend to make it feel cozy—but now I’m sure I was driving my high school brothers crazy, moping and hurting, refusing to leave the house. I stayed that way for the two weeks after my ignominious return.

  My parents and my brothers gave me the space I needed and a chance to come to grips with the death of my dream. Upon returning home from getting cut, Mom and Dad were as one would expect parents to be: very supportive, consoling, and encouraging. Mom’s repeatedly exhorted me to “get on with becoming a success in the game of life—after all, you went to school to get an excellent education, an education that would provide the necessary foundation for you, in just this instance, when the rug of athletics was snatched from under your feet.”

  They had patience with me, allowing me to sulk and moan for a period of time, but finally after a couple of weeks they said that it was time to get on with my life. After all, preparation for the rest of my life after basketball was the primary reason I had selected Harvard, they reminded me. I just couldn’t imagine anything besides a future in basketball. It was so clear to me that basketball was what I was gifted in, what I was created to do. I was beginning to realize that, for as many years of my life as I could recall, I had always felt as though my identity in the world which knew me, and the world which I knew, was inextricably tied to what I did on the basketball court. Little, if anything else.

  Basketball was who I was.

  When I finally did start to venture out of the house after my self-imposed two-week hibernation, the reaction I received to my sooner-than-planned return from the ranks of the NBA was varied. My friends—doing their best to deflect the tension and embarrassment both they and I were feeling—provided me with a ready-made list of excuses. “Cotton Fitzsimmons had a favorite” (a favorite player, that he kept instead of me and obviously without regard for ability), “the league was too black” (the implication being that the Hawks therefore needed to keep more whites), and so on. There were still others—a little less deft with their attempts to make me feel any better—who pointed back to what they believed was my ill-fated decision to attend Harvard, rather than a school that would have better prepared me for a longer life in basketball, like North Carolina or UCLA. They had believed, at the time of my college decision, that I would regress in my abilities and lag in my development if I attended Harvard—where the level of competition on the basketball court was not nearly as high—and saw my release by the Atlanta Hawks, or any team for that matter, as inevitable and simply proving the correctness of their hypothesis.

  Making matters worse, the regular NBA season had begun and the Hawks’s first round pick John Brown was playing regularly and well, and would end up the season averaging over nine points per game that year. Accordingly, as folks were still learning of my failure to cross the expected threshold into professional basketball, his name would show up in the sports section of the newspaper in the box score as “J Brown,” leading to awkward conversations around the neighborhood at the beginning.

  “Hey, James. How are you back in town already? I saw that you had twelve points in Detroit against the Pistons last night—good game.” And others, until everyone in the neighborhood eventually knew that the J Brown they knew wasn’t the one in the box score for the Hawks.

  After those two weeks of staying in the house, though, and through much honest introspection, the events and experiences of the last few years began to make sense to me. My time at Harvard and our team’s inability to reach the expected levels of excellence and my failure to make it with the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA, and where and what the next steps for my life might look like, all began to become clearer to me. Some answers to what had occurred were painful to face and admit, as I continued to think through things in the midst of my self-imposed hiatus from the world. I think my parents knew that I needed that time, knew that I would eventually come to a better place.

  The bottom line is that I didn’t work as hard to stay on top as I did to get to the top. It was that simple. I knew all along from my time with Coach Wootten what it took to be successful. I was talented, but had always had to work diligently, and a little extra, to supplement my God-given talent, and to shape and improve it to the fullest. Most of us, even the Tiger Woodses, Peyton Mannings, and Michael Jordans of the world—are that way. There was sufficient talent at Harvard and in the Ivy League to challenge me to improve and to sharpen my skills, and the coaching staff was a solid staff, capable of teaching me all that I needed to know to continue to improve my game.

  The skeptics may have thought right in predicti
ng I would not enjoy athletic success at Harvard… that playing in the Ivy League would not prepare me for a career in professional basketball. The reasons for my failure were completely my fault, not Harvard’s. I had spent all summer after the draft running, working, training, shooting, dribbling, doing everything I could to get ready for training camp. The reality is, though, that I had needed to do that for every summer of the four years I was at Harvard, not just the one summer before I was trying to step onto the stage of which I had always dreamed. Learning proficiency at a craft requires the steady, diligent application of one’s focus and determination to that craft. Practice, practice, practice. The right way, every time. Time after time after time. Thinking that I could begin that kind of preparation at the tail end of my college career would not begin to make up for the lack of passion and determination that I had exhibited during my Harvard career. Obviously it didn’t, and now I was in a nightmare of my own making. To some extent, I feel I also shortchanged Harvard University by not applying those things I knew I needed to do to improve during my time there. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why our much touted recruiting class never lived up to the expectations which they, and others, had set for it.