Mike Brown nearly missed a call that changed his life.
It was the spring of 2000 and Brown had just served his first two seasons as an NBA assistant coach with the Washington Wizards. The organization fired its head coach midway through a disappointing 29-53 campaign, moving on from Gar Heard to interim coach Darrell Walker, a former Chicago Bulls guard, in Michael Jordan’s first substantial move as team owner.
Jordan — yes, that Michael Jordan — indicated to Brown he made enough of an impression to earn a position in the front office the following season. Brown, who became close with Jordan after he took over as Wizards’ owner, initially agreed, which meant a trip to the annual pre-draft scouting combine in Chicago as part of his executive responsibilities.
But first, Brown went to visit his two sons, Elijah and Cameron, in Colorado.
“I never answered my cell phone when I hung out with them,” Brown said.
Brown ended up missing a phone call from Hank Egan, his college coach at University of San Diego, who was an assistant for the San Antonio Spurs under Gregg Popovich. Egan was Popovich’s coach at the Air Force Academy before coaching Brown at San Diego, and he thought highly enough of Brown to recommend him for his coaching staff after losing Paul Pressey to the Orlando Magic.
“I didn’t really know Pop,” Brown said.
Brown, while visiting with his kids, let Egan’s voicemail sit in his inbox unchecked for a week. And the opportunity to coach under the eventual Hall of Famer and multiple-time champion nearly slipped through his fingers.
“As I’m heading to the airport to fly to Chicago, I check my messages and I’m listening to this message from Hank, and I’m like, ‘Oh, crap! I can’t believe I missed this thing,’” Brown said. “Dumbest thing in the world.”
By the time Brown called Egan back, the position had been filled. It was taken by Alvin Gentry, who is currently in a player engagement role in the Kings’ front office after serving as interim coach last season.
Then Brown got a little lucky after initially missing out on the Spurs job.
The Los Angeles Clippers were struggling to hire a head coach that summer. They had tried to convince then Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins and former Cleveland Cavaliers coach Mike Fratello, who both took their names out of the running because the job didn’t have much appeal. A core young player at the time, Darius Miles, said publicly he wanted the team to hire John Lucas while point guard Jeff McInnis was pining for assistant Dennis Johnson.
The Clippers eventually landed on Gentry, making the unusual move of hiring a head coach in August, opening up a spot on the Spurs bench that Brown initially missed out on.
Popovich told Brown, “If you want the job, this is the deal: I’m going to put you behind the bench initially,” Brown recalled. “And if you prove you can move to the front of the bench, then we’ll redo your deal.”
It didn’t take long for Brown to move to the front of the bench and become one of Popovich’s lead assistants. Before the season began, Popovich took his coaches on a retreat to his vacation house in Maine, and Brown did enough during that trip to move from behind the bench to become one of Popovich’s confidants.
“I found out that he enjoyed wine, so I put him on the front of the bench,” Popovich, considered a sommelier among NBA coaches, joked during the Spurs’ visit to play the Kings last week. “If you like wine, you get special treatment.”
After the quip, Popovich reiterated what’s been clear since to the Kings and their fans since Brown’s first season as Sacramento’s head coach began in October. The Kings, of course, ended their historic 16-year playoff drought with Brown as the leading man in his first season, earned the third seed in the Western Conference and host the defending champion Golden State Warriors in the opening round beginning Saturday.
“It just became apparent,” Popovich said of that coaches’ retreat nearly 23 years ago. “I didn’t really know him that well personally when I hired him. I knew of him, I talked to him, I got a good vibe from him.
“But during our meetings, he showed an incisive sense of the game. The things he said made sense. He wasn’t trying to impress anybody. And as the days went on, it became pretty obvious that he’s somebody that I would value his opinions, so I put him on the front (of the bench).”
Brown was 30 when he first joined Popovich’s staff with the Spurs. He became known for his work on the defensive end and was at Popovich’s side when San Antonio won the NBA Finals in 2003. He moved on to become an assistant under Rick Carlisle with the Indiana Pacers — who were run by then-general manager Larry Bird — for the 2003-04 and 2004-05 seasons.
Brown then got his first head coaching job with the Cleveland Cavaliers, coaching LeBron James. Brown went to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2007 and won Coach of the Year in 2008-09 for helping set a new franchise record with 66 wins.
Fast-forward 16 years and Brown is a favorite to win Coach of the Year with Sacramento, using what he learned from Popovich, being around Jordan and Bird, coaching Tim Duncan and David Robinson, later working with James and Kobe Bryant, before winning three titles with the Warriors under Steve Kerr coaching Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant and many of the players Golden State will bring to Golden 1 Center this weekend.
“I really enjoyed my time with Mike,” Klay Thompson said recently, “asking him a ton of questions about what it was like coaching Kobe and LeBron, and how he got his start in the NBA. He’s been around this league for decades. He’s a really big basketball junky and he’s the leader of our defense. ... I look back on my time with Mike very fondly. He’s done such a great job this year. I hope he gets Coach of the Year.”
Brown has credited Popovich with his interpersonal skills to help reach his players, and Kerr for his messaging techniques to avoid his voice getting stale over the long haul of an 82-game schedule. Both of which have stood out to Kings players long before the season started.
“When I first signed and I got here,” said Kings guard Malik Monk, who signed with Sacramento over the summer, “I flew in and went to the hotel right across the street. (Brown) wanted to meet with me. And the first thing he asked was how’s my family doing? No other coach did that, ever, in my life. I knew he was going to be different since then.
“That’s just the type of dude Mike is. Just down to earth, super genuine, and he just wants the best for everybody, so he’s going to push everybody as hard as he can because he knows what we can be.”
Like many lifetime NBA coaches, Brown’s journey has been long with many stops. Landing the Spurs job set it all in motion, leading Brown to become one of the most important figures in Sacramento’s historic turnaround, and it almost never happened because of a missed phone call.
