BOWIE, Md. — Red reflectors line the long paved pathway at the end of Park Drive and lead to the two-story house set upon a wooded six-acre plot. Inside, Fred Brown, the 50-year-old former Georgetown guard, emerges through a white door marked “PRIVATE.” His hands are full, heavy with four framed photographs, two paintings and five plaques, a colorful assortment of commemoration and commendation. He sighs as he rubs a blue-and-gray cloth over his dusty team photo from Georgetown’s 1984 national title victory.
“Been a while,” he says, brushing cobwebs off his loose-fitting black shirt. Brown burnished his college career by leading the Hoyas to that championship, but the glistening smiles never eclipsed the glare of his greatest gaffe. Two years earlier, at the 1982 title game in New Orleans — the same site of this year’s Final Four 30 years ago — Michael Jordan, then a Tar Heel tenderfoot, knocked down a 17-foot jumper to give North Carolina a 63-62 lead with 17 seconds left. Brown, who stands 6-5, dribbled up court, but his peripheral vision failed him after he stopped near the key.
Brown thought he had guard Eric (Sleepy) Floyd open, and faked a pass to him, and a split second later mistook Tar Heels swingman James Worthy, for Hoyas forward Eric Smith.
Brown let slip an errant pass that unraveled into a game-ending turnover. On the court, Hoyas coach John Thompson placed an arm around Brown, a son of the South Bronx’s Soundview Houses and city title winner with Stevenson High.
“You’ve won more games than you lost,” Thompson said.
In the locker room, Brown, surrounded by more than 100 reporters, was steadfast in staying positive.
“I can’t let this affect the rest of life,” he said after the game.
Sitting in a wooden rocking chair in his home on Friday Brown goes back to that play, “People want to look at a smidgen of what I’ve done, one mistake, not the 98% of my life,” he says.
Questions about the pass still come each March. He feels eyes on him in gyms; calls and emails come from CBS producers. He says CBS reached out to him recently for a story on the 30th anniversary of the pass, and he declined.
“They just wanted to focus on the pass,” he says.
He accepts fault for his lapse, and now wants back into the game. Thirty years on, Brown, a successful real estate investor whose ventures have ranged from financial planning to rearing 14 German Shepherds, is enrolled in online courses for athletic administration at Ohio University. He wants to coach, sending his resume to 29 colleges in recent days.
Last week he learned that Kansas assistant Danny Manning would be named head coach at Tulsa once the Jayhawks end their season in the Final Four. Brown offered Manning his services in a voicemail.
“If I get a call back, great, if not I understand,” says Brown, who considered attending the coaches’ convention that accompanies the national semifinals. “I know he’s got a lot of people he’s met through 20 years in the NBA and all.”
Brown, who coached for five seasons at Episcopal High, an old money boarding school in Alexandria, Va. in the ’90s, maintains a presence locally. He attended Maryland’s state playoff games at the Comcast Center, sidled next to legendary Dunbar High coach Bob Wade, now athletic director for Baltimore public schools, soliciting advice and critiquing coaches’ decisions.
“I just told him he needs support wherever he goes,” Wade says. “You need the right landing spot.”
He’s been in contact with former Georgetown teammate Reggie Williams, now the coach at Carroll High nearby, and lists fellow Hoya Horace Broadnax, coach at Savannah State, and former Georgetown coach Craig Esherick as references.
A name absent from his list will be Thompson’s. The two had a falling out several years ago stemming from hard feelings Brown had toward Thompson’s treatment of former players. Brown vented to a Washington Post columnist, but he still refers to his mentor as “Coach Thompson,” turning reticent when asked about their relationship. They have not talked in at least five years.
Brown was never the same player after the 1982 game. In the subsequent offseason, he underwent surgery to his patella tendon, and he never moved as well again. Speed was an important part of his makeup, but now he added muscle, bulking up 30 pounds. The last meaningful game he ever played was the title win over Houston in 1984. He hoisted the trophy, then turned down an opportunity to try out for the NBA but was still drafted by the Atlanta Hawks. Already a father, he took a job in sales at Xerox. “I never got right,” he says. “Why go through it?”
He is thicker than he was during his playing days, and growing grayer on top. He recently separated from his wife, Melanie, whom he met as a freshman at Georgetown, but maintains touch. They have three children.
His daughter, Norma Alexis, is studying biomechanics at the University of Pennsylvania. His son, Freddie III, graduated from Georgetown and his youngest, David, is a student at Georgetown Day School.
“It’s not if I get back in the game,” he says. “It’s when I get back in the game.”
* * *
Brown’s childhood featured fenced-in territorial fights. Playing basketball on the court outside the Soundview Houses, he was invariably interrupted by older kids who displaced him, driving Brown and his friends from the asphalt. Typically, Brown, the baby of six siblings, sought out his brothers’ assistance. One day, he took exception. He repaired to his apartment, brought his family’s German Shepherds and yelled, “Sic ‘em!”
The teenagers took off, scrambling across the court, jumping the fences. Their faces and knuckles turned white as they held on for fear of falling to the dogs.
“Those boys learned,” he says.
Dogs attracted his attention. He enjoyed the way they absorbed their surroundings, and likened his ability to study people to the canines’ stares. What he saw on blighted corners was bleak at times. His mother, Miriam, served as an office manager at a local psychiatrist’s office, picking up extra shifts at Pathmark to make ends meet. His father, Fred Sr., worked in trucking as well as several illegal ventures, leaving the family when Brown was in second grade. His father was imprisoned five years later.
“I knew there had to be a better life,” Brown says.
Brown envisioned a world where he wore a suit to work. He bought a briefcase in the seventh grade and enrolled at Aviation High in Long Island City with an eye on becoming a pilot. His athleticism and ability to facilitate an offense elicited looks from coaches. One day, North Carolina coach Dean Smith left his business card with Brown and encouraged him to keep improving. Brown was a freshman.
He bore witness to the seamy side of basketball as well. Before a game, Brown saw his high school coach place a bet on the outcome. Their team went on to lose, and the coach laid into Brown afterward.
“Why aren’t you more upset,” he asked Brown.
Brown explained that he was not willing to allow the defeat to overwhelm him.
“We did our best,” Brown said.
The coach, still upset, demanded Brown give him his jersey. Brown, recently aware that he would not be able to become a pilot because an eye test revealed he was color-blind, complied and transferred to Stevenson at the end of the school year.
Discipline brought him to the park courts at four o’clock most mornings. He did not want others to know how he developed his skill set so he woke before dawn. To get out of the neighborhood he traveled with the Gauchos summer team, excelling at sites as far away as Salt Lake City, and college coaches came to him. Syracuse, Ohio State, BYU and Michigan State all offered scholarships, but Thompson won out.
“I wanted two things from college: to play for a black coach and get an education,” he says.
Basketball aside, Georgetown allowed him to grow. He admits the preppy campus was a culture shock at first, but he flourished, extending his education at Georgetown law school after his career was over. He eventually stopped attending classes for the coaching life at Episcopal, but his wife never fully approved of the limits it put on his time with his own children.
Investments, including the collection of single-family homes stretching from Baltimore to Harlem, carried him over the years. He also worked in sales at Smith Barney and Merrill Lynch. He wore his championship ring to impress potential clients.
“I actually had another one made,” he says. “The original ring didn’t fit anymore, and I couldn’t get it re-sized. The one I have now is solid gold.”
He flourished in finance, retiring and reinventing several times, but his greatest loss came in the family. In April of 2006, his brother, Glenn, who brought basketball into their family’s apartment, was murdered by a business partner, Michael J. Mitchell, in light of a dispute over property. Mitchell proceeded to struggle with a Mount Vernon police detective, gained possession of the officer’s gun and shot him in the foot when brought in for questioning. Mitchell was sentenced to 22½ years.
“Just awful,” Brown says. “You look for the positives in every situation, but just count your blessings of where you are.”
Two King Shepherds — named Fuzzy and Chloe — remain his companions.
They live in the basement and keep similarly odd hours as their owner. They will run outside around 2 a.m., chasing after deer and nosing into the pond behind the oak trees. They return two hours later, typically greeted by Brown, their reliable feeder. On the kitchen counter is a worn paperback copy of the best-seller “Chicken Soup for the Pet Lovers’ Soul”.
“I love them,” Brown says. “Don’t be fooled though. They’ll take care of me if anyone comes up that driveway.”
* * *
Brown’s house in Bowie doubles as a reminder that not all employment ventures go as planned. The building is licensed and registered to serve as an assisted living facility, and “EXIT” signs hang over each entryway. There are “NO SMOKING” postings throughout the first floor.
On an adjacent wall by a bookshelf there are directions instructing inhabitants on how to report abuse.
“Just couldn’t make a go of it,” Brown says of his decision to scrap the assisted living business model and rent the rooms instead. He has not hung anything Georgetown related for years, not since his stint at Episcopal, but came across the frames and plaques while searching for a basketball Friday afternoon. In his mind, Brown is already decorating his next workspace. He walks down the wooden steps to the basement where his dogs roam, and picks up a frame lying against the wall.
Brown’s brightest on-court moment is captured in the painting that was presented to him in celebration of the 1984 title win. Two scenes are represented. On the top, Patrick Ewing and three teammates surround Houston center Akeem Olajuwon near the rim. On the bottom, Thompson, towel over his left shoulder, is calling out a play. Ewing is next to him exhorting his team. There, out front on a fast break is Brown, in full stride, the ball in his right hand and a running mate filling the lane to his left.
“Sure would look nice on a coaching office wall,” he says.
