Hubie Brown
The last game of Hubie Brown's altruistic basketball career, which spanned over 50 years and began at St. Mary's of the Assumption High School in the late 1940s, comes to a tearful end Sunday afternoon as the Milwaukee Bucks beat the 76ers.
The basketball lifer Hubie Brown started playing for his high school in multiple sports, winning state titles in three different sports while he was there. After he won state titles, he went on to Niagara University to play baseball and basketball, where he roomed with future Utah Jazz coach Frank Layden. He would then move on to serve in the army and play for their basketball team before realizing one of his dreams and being able to play professional basketball for the Rochester Colonels in 1958. After the league folded after just eight games, he went back to school to pursue a master's degree to embark on his historic coaching career.
His legendary coaching career would begin at St. Mary's Academy in Little Falls, New York, where he would coach baseball and basketball. He then coached at Cranford High, followed by Fair Lawn High School, before accepting a position as an assistant coach at the College of William & Mary. He would parlay that into a job at Duke, where he coached under Bucky Waters for four seasons.
His first stop in the NBA would come with the Milwaukee Bucks as an assistant, where he would help future Hall of Famers Oscar Robertson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. After that team lost in seven games in the Finals to the Boston Celtics, he took his first professional head coaching job in the ABA for the Kentucky Colonels. He would lead them to their first championship in under two years' time in 1975. He was never fired from this job and held the title until the ABA-NBA merger. Unfortunately, he was the head coach of one of the two teams that were not picked up by the NBA in the merger, the other being St. Louis.
After the merger, the Atlanta Hawks hired him as their head coach, where he would stay for the next five years and win Atlanta's second-ever division title. He would also win Coach of the Year honors in his second year with the team. He was relieved of his duties in 1981. A year later, in 1982, he would become the New York Knicks head coach. He didn't have the best tenure with the Knicks, mostly due to injuries to Bernard King and their promising young player, Patrick Ewing. He saw the writing on the wall, and while his team wasn't in the playoffs, he began calling playoff games for the NBA. He would then leave the team at the start of the 1986-87 season and embark on his historic broadcasting career.
In 1986, he signed with CBS to be a full-time commentator. During his time with CBS, he worked with some of the more legendary names in sports broadcasting, including Brent Musburger, Vin Scully, and Dick Stockton. He would then do local games for the Detroit Pistons and Philadelphia 76ers before taking a job with TNT in the early 1990s, where he worked with some of his old colleagues from CBS until he was selected for the Memphis Grizzlies head coaching job by Jerry West in 2002.
His second coaching stint began in 2002 after the Memphis Grizzlies started 0-8 and Jerry West fired then-head coach Sidney Lowe. Brown finished the season 28-46 after the rough start. He made an impressive turnaround the following season, going 50-32 and making the playoffs for the first time in franchise history. The team was led by a young Pau Gasol, James Posey, and White Chocolate, Jason Williams. Sadly, they got swept by the dynasty San Antonio Spurs in the first round. After the season, Hubie Brown was named Coach of the Year for the second time in his career, 26 years apart from the last one, which stands as the longest gap between awards. Brown stayed with the team as best he could until he experienced health problems that forced him to resign on Thanksgiving Day in 2004. He then focused on his health before returning to broadcasting for ABC in time for the 2005 Finals. He would stay with ABC/ESPN to finish out his career in basketball.
Hubie Brown called his last game on February 9, 2025. The game itself was great, but we all knew we were watching to witness someone who has been part of so many great games make his last call on the mic. The great Mike Tirico joined the broadcast via video and shared some of his best moments with Mr. Brown that were strong enough to make a grown man cry. He was a great NBA coach, winning Coach of the Year honors twice with two different franchises, almost 30 years apart. He's one of those basketball lifers that don't come around often. He didn't start a clothing line or branch off to do other things—he was family and basketball; anything else came after. To do what you love until you are in your 90s is something many people don't have the chance to do. I'm just happy to say I was here to watch and listen to his last game before a historic Super Bowl matchup.
