There have been erupting volcanoes that have let off less smoke and steam than Hubie Brown.
Toward the end of Brown’s turbulent 142-202 stint in the mid-1980s as coach of the New York Knicks, the demanding perfectionist finally was too much for the players.
There were expletives everywhere as the empty gym echoed with Brown’s maniacal shouts. The players snapped. Darrell Walker, the hard-working defensive ace from Chicago’s Corliss High School, was among several to grab the basketballs and head into the stands during practice.
Eventually, Brown would finish the practice without basketballs, and 16 games into the following season, 1986-87, Brown would be fired and would not coach again in the NBA.
Until Tuesday.
That was when the 69-year-old TV broadcaster was named to replace Sidney Lowe as coach of the 0-8 Memphis Grizzlies.
“When I called Hubie I said to him, `Are you sitting down? How would you like to coach again?'” said Jerry West, Grizzlies president of basketball operations, who said he accepted Lowe’s supposedly unexpected resignation Tuesday morning. “There was silence at first, but the thing that impresses me the most is that he sounded like a teenager ready for his first date.
“Hubie is one of the premier basketball minds in the business,” West said. “Our young, talented players will have the experience of working with the ultimate teacher.”
Brown, who has been a prominent TV analyst since leaving coaching 15 years ago, would be 72 when he finishes his three-year contract, estimated at $10 million.
He is taking over a franchise that never has won more than 23 games and is last in the league in defense after an embarrassing home loss to Golden State on Monday.
Lowe was not long for the job because he wasn’t West’s hire. But the surprise was the hiring of Brown, whose son, Brendan, is a Grizzlies scout. It gives the Grizzlies, with the 64-year-old West and Chuck Daly, 72, as a consultant, the oldest management team in pro sports.
And Brown is assigned to breathe life into its young players. More than a decade after the belief was Brown could not coach the game’s young. And that was when more of the players at least had attended college.
Brown, regarded when he coached as a brilliant tactician, also was known for his disdain and bitter feuds with fellow coaches. He once said he, Jack Ramsay and Dick Motta were “on an island” separated from the other coaches. He demanded hard-nosed defensive play and raged constantly at players, whom he often insulted as “cement heads.”
Never much of a player except for a bit role in the old Eastern League, Brown won an ABA title and then had a briefly successful run with the Atlanta Hawks with a group of CBA-type players whom he could drive with his manic style. When he had a more talented group in New York with Patrick Ewing, Bill Cartwright and Bernard King, they rebelled.
Raised in a strict Catholic family, Brown’s middle name is Jude, for the patron saint of lost causes. The Grizzlies qualify, though no one ever accused Hubie Brown of being a saint.
