“I don’t think I’m 90 years old,” says Hubie Brown, who celebrated his 90th birthday on Sept. 25. “I never get up in the morning and say, ‘Geez, I’m 90 years old. What am I going to do today?’ I’m 90 years old, and I come downstairs and I get my manila pad out, and I have a list of all the things I’m going to do today. Then, at night, I have a list of which games I’m going to watch. Then, during the games, I’m going to pick out certain things I’m interested in. It’s always the love of the game for me.”
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On Christmas Day at Madison Square Garden, where 37 years earlier he walked the sidelines as the head coach of the New York Knicks, there was Brown, sitting next to play-by-play partner Dave Pasch, doing what he has done every year for ESPN/ABC since 2004: educating an NBA audience via his staccato delivery, reminding all of us about the importance of the painted area.
Brown coached Kareem and Oscar, coached against Kobe and LeBron, and now calls games featuring Giannis and Wembanyama. An assistant at William & Mary and Duke, an assistant with the Bucks, and an ABA champion as the coach of the Kentucky Colonels, Brown started in broadcasting during the 1981-82 season when he teamed up with Al Albert on the USA Network after he was fired as head coach of the Atlanta Hawks.
There were coaching returns along the way (five years with the Knicks, from 1982-87, and three with the Memphis Grizzlies, from 2002-05), but Brown has essentially been a soundtrack for the NBA for five decades. (When the Knicks fired Brown in 1987, he became a full-time analyst for CBS and then moved over to TNT in 1990 when CBS lost the NBA rights.) He is the personification of adaptation. The NBA changes and morphs, an In-Season Tournament is added, and Brown remains, forever in love with the game and never scolding current players like a schoolmarm. He also has modified some of his worst tendencies as the years have forged on. With age comes wisdom (hopefully).
If Brown has a broadcasting philosophy that can be distilled into a single sentence it is this: Never underestimate the IQ of the audience.
“Before I do a telecast, I make sure that I have just seen the two teams play their last two games,” Brown said. “The reason for that is I want to be current about the injuries, the new starting group, and then see how they are running their substitutions. Plus, I want to evaluate how they react in the last five minutes of the game about what they’re running under pressure and out-of-bounds plays. We’re not only a national broadcast, but we are going to 215 countries — and that’s a lot of pressure — so we need to be current and speak about what we think can happen and then when it happens, explain why it happened. The guys in the truck have got to be with us and give us the necessary pictures to back up what we’re talking about.
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“I never want to go into a telecast and not be prepared about where this team is, where the injuries are, what the problems are. I try to speak to the people in the audience exactly like I’m talking to my assistant coaches and to the players in the huddles when we’re talking at a timeout. We owe you why are things happening. And when things happen, we want to back that up for you, because never once do I ever underestimate the IQ of the audience.”
Hubie Brown is my Sports Media Person of 2023 because he personifies not having occupational limits. I watched him and Pasch call the Knicks vs. the Milwaukee Bucks on Christmas, and Brown still educates on possessions. He was cogent and detailed on why Khris Middleton and Jalen Brunson are effective scorers inside the 3-point area. In the fourth quarter, literally as he was discussing the Knicks crushing the Bucks via points in the paint, Brunson added another layup on a crafty move to add to the total.
Is Brown the same broadcaster he was 40 years ago? Of course not. But he’s also not a gimmick. He belongs in his chair.
“I continue to learn something from Hubie every game,” said Pasch. “Specifically for the Bucks-Knicks, before the game in our preparation discussions and early on in the broadcast, Hubie highlighted the physicality of the Knicks and how critical that was to finally beat Milwaukee. He kept pointing out the points in the paint differential, fast break points, and other hustle stats to show how that physicality and desire was playing out in a favorable way for New York. He noticed Isaiah Hartenstein’s rebounding position, tips on offensive rebounds to keep plays alive, deflections on defense, and how important his role was since the Knicks were playing without Mitchell Robinson and Jericho Sims. It’s also the little things that Hubie notices and punctuates to help the viewer understand not just the ‘what’ but the ‘why’ in a broadcast. That helps me as a play-by-play announcer, because I start to see those things as well, and can incorporate those into my call of the game.
“He does two things during commercial breaks that obviously the audience isn’t privy to. First, he regularly asks me if I am getting enough time to call the game, how things sound, and if we are working in tandem. Hubie is an incredible teammate. We spend a decent amount of time together off the air and normally have dinner the night before the game. He treats me like I am part of his family, and that comes through in our communication on game day. The second thing Hubie does is point out important stats on the box score that stand out to him. It helps me as his broadcast partner because it gives me a sense of what is important to him, where to lead him, or to reemphasize later in the broadcast.”
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Brown has said in previous interviews that if he had a life motto it is this: You are always a half step from the street. It came from his father, Charlie, who worked as a foreman at the federal shipyard in Kearny, New Jersey. I asked him after all these years and all his successes, if that motto still drives him.
“I always say that it is imprinted on my brain,” Brown said. “The Kearny shipyards, they made the destroyers and battleships that went over to Europe. My dad was the foreman, and his crew would take those ships and drop them off on the different bases up and down the Eastern Seaboard because those ships were going over to Europe during the Second World War. About two years after the war ended, they closed the shipyards. So my dad was unemployed. He went to work for my mom’s sister’s husband at the Singer sewing-machine plant in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He was a machinist. He could fix anything.
“Then the Kearny shipyards reopened. He had 19 years in already. He goes back, and then five to six months later, they closed the shipyard. Jobs were tough. And this man with incredible pride walked the streets for eight months and couldn’t find a job. He became the janitor of my high school, Saint Mary’s High School in Elizabeth, New Jersey. I was in the seventh grade when he told me: ‘Chief, I want you to remember this the rest of your life. No matter how good life is going for you, just remember that you’re a half step from the street.'”
That philosophy has also guided Brown with his health. He stopped watching full West Coast games a couple of years ago because they ended too late and he was cheating himself on his sleep. He played tennis for many years and also took up swimming later in his life.
“I would say to myself while swimming, ‘I’m going to do eight laps right now,’ and I’d be thinking about a topic I had to work on during each lap,” Brown said. “Then I would get out of the pool and I’d have a pad there where I would write down all these things. Playing tennis was good, but now I have a lower back problem between my third and fourth vertebrae that they can’t heal right now, so I can’t play tennis. The tennis was great because of the competition and then learning how to play with people that are much better than you. But swimming is good for you for the stamina and everything else, as well as making sure you don’t cheat on the doctors.”
“Other than some of the physical challenges of being 90, the man hasn’t slowed down,” said Ken Dennis, who directs NBA games for ESPN/ABC and has worked with Brown for 15 years. “He flies in a day early, hits the hotel, grabs dinner early and is back to his room to watch TNT or whoever has games on that night. He builds his board and notes for the game. Honestly, other than a slightly slower walking pace, I haven’t seen a lot of change in the years I’ve known him. He’s always asking me how he did on a show we just finished. He’ll say, ‘Be honest now!’ He loves feedback.
“He also asks about our people. My crew has become his crew. Probably the most fun thing for me to see and hear is all the coaches, players, fans, etc., that see him. When he’s sitting at the table courtside doing his prep, players warming up on the floor come over to say hello, wish him well, or even to get a thought from him on their play. You see the respect and the reverence.”
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Brown has worked about 15 games each season over the last four years for ESPN/ABC and says that’s perfect for him. His enthusiasm and work is such that if his health remains, there’s no reason he can’t keep doing this for a couple of years.
“I basically do two games a month, and it works out great,” Brown says. “It keeps me alive, vital, and on top of what’s going on and current. To me, the schedule is perfect. I can’t thank the people at ABC and ESPN enough for the fact that they continue to extend me year after year without my agent pestering them for an extension (laughs).”
A couple of quick 2023 recommendations as we close out the year:
• Documentaries: “Goliath,” a three-part documentary series from Showtime Sports on Wilt Chamberlain; “The Billion Dollar Goal,” an exploration from Paramount+ of the evolution of soccer in the United States told through the late Grant Wahl and other prominent soccer voices; Netflix’s “Bill Russell: Legend,” which recounts the many trials of the Hall of Fame center.
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A new Grant Wahl tribute, CBS' Bills-Chiefs ending, Shohei Ohtani's TV impact with Dodgers
Books: “The Right Call: What Sports Teach Us About Work and Life,” by Sally Jenkins; “Gambler: Secrets from a Life at Risk,” by Billy Walters and Armen Keteyian; “Warrior: My Path To Being Brave” by Lisa Guerrero. In the spirit of cheap plugs, let me also mention the book I guest-edited this year: The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2023.
Story: This piece from Michael Wilson might have been my favorite newspaper story from 2023 because it illustrates how little we often know about our neighbors.
Viewership: The caveat is the NFL will always feature the most-watched games of the year. But outside of the NFL, there were some remarkable numbers including Colorado’s double-overtime victory over Colorado State, which kicked off at 10 p.m. ET and drew 9.3 million viewers. But the No. 1 viewership number for me given how much it crossed over into popular sports culture was LSU’s win over Iowa in the women’s college basketball title game drawing 9.9 million viewers. It was the most-viewed women’s college basketball game on record and peaked at 12.6 million viewers. The previous all-time record, per Sports Media Watch, was believed to be 8.1 million viewers for a Virginia-Stanford national semifinal on CBS in 1992.
(Photo of Hubie Brown in March 2022: Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)
