Nobody ever got shot in the gym.
So during summer months when adolescent boys had been known to find trouble on the streets of Maywood, Sgt. Chris Brown pulled some strings to get the keys to the Proviso East High School gym and turn it into a playroom for his son Shannon and friends such as Dee Brown.
Talent galore filled it regularly. The roster also included Charles Richardson Jr., a reserve at Nebraska who was the point guard when the two Browns played at Proviso East. Former Manley standout Luther Head, suddenly an Illini legend, occasionally showed up. As did ex-Chicago high school stars Will Bynum, a standout at Georgia Tech, and Tony Allen, a current member of the Boston Celtics, among others.
“We used to joke with Mr. Brown that we could sell out the gym in about five minutes if we put all these names on a list and told people all of us were going to be playing basketball against each other at night,” Richardson said on the phone Monday from Lincoln, Neb. “But those games kept us off the streets.”
Hour after hour, night after night, Sgt. Brown, a 22-year veteran of the Maywood Police Department, would sit alone inside the gym and monitor shooting that had nothing to do with bullets. He watched as tempers flared but never worried because all disputes were settled on the safe haven of the basketball court.
When Michigan State guard Shannon Brown and Illinois guard Dee Brown play under the same roof again Saturday inside the Edward Jones Dome at St. Louis in their respective NCAA Final Four games, Sgt. Brown will consider it a testament to a friendship forged during those summer nights and a victory for old-fashioned values.
“Shannon and Dee made a conscious effort to stay out of jail, not mess with drugs and shoot pool or go to the bowling alley to avoid things that some other kids were doing,” Sgt. Brown said Monday at the police station. “It was a sacrifice and wasn’t easy, but they did it anyway–together.”
Together again
Sunday morning, hours after Illinois had secured a spot in college basketball history and the NCAA Final Four with a 90-89 victory over Arizona, Dee Brown called his hometown buddy in Austin, Texas, where Michigan State was preparing to play Kentucky, and challenged him with an invitation. “See you in St. Louis,” he said.
A couple of hours after Michigan State’s double-overtime victory that guaranteed the high school reunion under the Arch, Shannon Brown returned the call. But not before sharing his mixture of joy and disbelief with his proud dad.
“Wow,” Shannon Brown told his father, “this is crazy.”
That was an understatement, Chris Brown thought to himself. Anxiety ran so high Sunday as the family gathered at the home of Betty Richardson, Shannon’s grandmother, for Easter dinner to watch the game on television that Richardson had to leave the room during the overtime sessions.
“I couldn’t watch,” she said.
Her grandson could not miss. Shannon Brown led the way for the Spartans with 24 points, including 5-of-6 three-pointers, to earn Austin regional most-valuable-player honors. It clinched him a spot at the Final Four alongside the Big Ten Player of the Year, Dee Brown.
In Maywood, they reacted Monday by painting the town Brown.
Proviso East athletic director Mike Caldwell pulled out old navy blue jerseys and magazine covers. Former coaches such as Andrew Johnson, who taught both Browns how to drive a car, reminisced about the day the two met as teenagers at a basketball camp held by Michael Finley, the former Proviso East star who blossomed into an NBA star with the Dallas Mavericks.
A year older than Shannon, Dee Brown became the first freshman to start on the Proviso East varsity. The point guard got noticed because of his quick feet, according to Johnson, but made an even bigger impression with his fast-talking.
“I always told Dee that if basketball didn’t work out, he could become a lawyer,” Johnson said.
About the same time, Shannon Brown, at 6 feet 4 inches a head taller than Dee, started drawing attention to himself, though with actions instead of words. As a freshman playing for the junior-varsity, Shannon Brown shattered a glass backboard on a dunk during physical education class.
As obvious as his physical gifts were, Brown still only became a starter as a sophomore after the guy playing in front of him was suspended for wearing his hair in braids–the style both Browns fashion now.
So ended Shannon Brown’s days as a substitute, and Proviso East went on to win 76 of the 87 games he started. In the two years they played together, the two Browns operated on the wing while Richardson played the role of point guard and diplomat.
“It helped we were all such close friends,” Richardson said. “There was only one ball.”
They learned to share well enough for Dee Brown to win the Mr. Basketball of Illinois Award in 2002, an honor bestowed upon Shannon Brown a year later.
The two careers were so parallel that many expected Shannon to follow Dee to Champaign, but the presence of Head and Deron Williams made it too crowded for someone who wanted to start immediately.
“You think Shannon would have been playing now at Illinois?” his dad asked. “Michigan State needed him more than Illinois did. But other than their choice of college, if Dee did something, Shannon did it, it was like a ladder.
“The chance for them now to do something on the same day, like win a Final Four game so they could play against each other in a national championship . . . this week it’s bigger than the Super Bowl here in Maywood.”
In the spotlight
Three TV news crews had visited Caldwell’s office by 2 p.m. Monday, the type of media commotion that usually follows a murder in the community of 27,000. Just a year ago, in fact, 17-year-old Calvin Ector–a promising basketball player and close friend of both Browns and Richardson–died after he was gunned down. That came a month after another Proviso East student was shot and killed walking downtown.
“It’s nice to see reporters here for a good reason,” Caldwell said.
The village had 20 murders in 2003–a rate nearly three times per capita higher than in Chicago–and eight last year.
“Things started getting real bad with gangs and drugs around my junior year [in 2002],” Richardson said. “It could get rough.”
Shannon Brown regularly wears a headband that carries the inscription, “R.I.P. Tati,” in memory of his 14-year-old cousin Tatiana, who was killed in nearby Bellwood. Violence hits close to almost every home, even the most stable.
“That’s why what Shannon and Dee are doing this week is so important to the kids in these hallways,” Johnson said. “When they see someone like those two take such a big step, it doesn’t seem that far.”
Not so far away, on the asphalt basketball courts at Schroeder Park in nearby Broadview, the playground where Shannon and Dee Brown spent many a summer day learning game’s rules of survival, a group of teenagers took advantage of Monday’s mild temperatures.
They played two-on-two and five-on-five. They practiced last-second shots. They competed hard as if something big were on the line, as it will be next weekend when two other kids from their neighborhood take the court in St. Louis.
“I’m shaking with chills just thinking about the possibility of Shannon and Dee both winning and playing for the national title,” Richardson said. “Who would have believed that?”
