A fond farewell to Herb Brown, the octogenarian Oregonian who has coached the world

https://www.kerryeggers.com/stories/a-fond-farewell-to-herb-brown-the-octogenarian-oregonian-who-has-coached-the-world

February 4, 2021

Written By Kerry Eggers

Put Herb Brown in among the famous Oregonians who flies under the radar in the world of sports.

The older brother (by 4 1/2 years) of Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer Larry Brown is an accomplished casaba coach in his own right.

Brown, who turns 85 in March, is most well-known for his time spent as head coach of the Detroit Pistons from 1975-77.

But Brown’s resume is replete with stops throughout the world. The native New Yorker has had assistant coaching jobs with eight franchises, including the Trail Blazers. He was a member of Maurice Cheeks’ Portland staff from 2001-03.

During more than five decades of coaching at the college and professional level, Brown also landed jobs in Puerto Rico, Israel, Spain and Pakistan and put in stints in the International Basketball League, the Western Basketball Association and the Continental Basketball Association. His last coaching gig was as an assistant at the University of Portland under Eric Reveno during the 2014-15 season.

Coaching has allowed Brown to see the world, and then some.

“I wouldn’t trade my life for anything, except I wish I’d met (wife) Sherri sooner,” he says. “I really mean that.”

Brown has basically called Oregon home since he joined Cheeks’ staff in 2001. He married Sherri — a Sunset High grad — in 2003 and they bought a home in Neskowin in 2004, the year he won a championship ring as an assistant on the Pistons’ coaching staff under his brother. Herb and Sherri bought a place in Beaverton in 2007 but are now living in Neskowin after selling their Beaverton dwelling.

Herb’s time as an Oregonian will soon end. The Browns are building a house in Travelers Rest, S.C., a town of about 5,200 located nine miles from Greenville. The bucolic burg is located midway between where two of Herb’s children live — in Charlotte and Atlanta — so he’ll be closer to his five grandchildren. The house is expected to be ready in March.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” Brown says. “It’s exciting. Sherri is overwhelmed, but she is doing a terrific job with plans for the new house.

“I’ve made some very good friends and Sherri has some terrific family here, so that will be difficult. But I’m an ardent Republican and am very disappointed in the political atmosphere in Oregon. The divisiveness in Portland is really abhorrent.”

Brown has something else to look forward to. This fall, he’ll be inducted into the University of Vermont Hall of Fame. He played basketball for the Catamounts from 1953-57.

“I’m honored and humbled, I really am,” Brown says. “My name has come up a number of times. They take only one older graduate into the hall every three years. I thought it would never happen.”

Brown grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn in a childhood that bookended World War II. When he was 11, his father, Milton (a furniture salesman), took a job in Pittsburgh. Three months later, he died of an aneurism. Herb, Larry and their mother, Ann, returned to Brooklyn, then moved to Long Beach on Long Island where she ran a bakery for the next 17 years.

“Long Beach was a great community, middle class with terrific schools and a strong recreation program,” Herb says. “It was right on the Atlantic Ocean on Long Island’s south shore. We’d have 20,000 people there in the winters and 100,000 in the summers.”

After he graduated from Vermont, Brown went to work in New York as a junior executive in a department store. That didn’t last long.

“I didn’t like it,” he says. “I knew I wanted to coach.”

Brown went to night school at Adelphi College, received his masters in education and got a job teaching junior high. After a five-month stint in the Army in 1960, he was hired as an assistant coach at C.W. Post, a school located in Brookville, N.Y., which played in the NCAA College Division. He spent four years coaching there before being hired at Stony Brook (N.Y.) to start a varsity program there.

“They only had a club team,” Brown recalls. “I called up their athletic director and asked, ‘Are you looking for a basketball coach?’ “

Brown was hired to run the program that began as a Division II independent. He started a varsity baseball program there the next year and, while serving as a full-time p.e. instructor, was head coach of both sports for four years in addition to taking on the AD role his fourth year at the school.

Herb returned to C.W. Post as an assistant in 1969 and became the school’s head coach his final two years there from 1972-74.

“I loved it,” Brown says. “I thought I’d never coach anywhere else. My whole dream was to be a Division II college coach and have a great small college program.”

But Brown was about to see the world. In 1972, he traveled to Pakistan to help train the national team for three weeks in preparation for the Asian Games. That summer, Brown landed a job coaching in Puerto Rico, a gig that lasted for 15 years.

In 1974, he was hired as head coach of a team in Israel (he is Jewish) in the European Pro Basketball League, which comprised of only American players. Among players on his team were M.L. Carr, who played nine years in the NBA, and Lon Kruger, now head coach at Oklahoma and a veteran of 31 years as a Division I head coach.

“Del Harris coached a team in Spain,” Brown says. “John Vallely coached in Belgium. We won the league. Then it folded.”

In 1975, Ray Scott hired him as assistant coach with the Pistons. In January 1976, he was fired and Brown — in his first season coaching in the NBA — was named as his replacement.

Over the next two years, Brown had some good talent in Detroit, with players such as Bob Lanier, Curtis Rowe, M.L. Carr, Chris Ford, Marvin “Bad News” Barnes, Archie Clark, Eric Money and Kevin and Howard Porter.

“I had good players, but I had players who were always bitching about their contracts,” Brown says. “I ended up playing them against each other. I played who I felt were the best guys.”

Brown loved the coaching part of the NBA, but wasn’t prepared for dealing with agents, the media obligations, the team’s executives and other distractions. The Pistons made the playoffs during his only full season (1976-77) at 44-38, losing 2-1 in a best-of-three first-round series with Golden State.

Lanier was injured and missed the first 20 games of the 1977-78 season. Four games later, the Pistons were 9-15 and Brown was fired. He would never get another chance to be an NBA head coach.

“I would have liked another shot at it,” he says. “I do regret that.”

In 1978-79, Brown coached Tucson to a 32-16 regular-season record and the championship in the fledgling WBA . Among the players on the Gunners was rookie guard Gerald Henderson, who would go on to a 13-year NBA career. En route to the title, the Gunners beat teams coached by Bucky Buckwalter (later to be the Blazers’ director of player personnel), John Wetzel and Bill Musselman (both later Blazer assistant coaches). Then the league folded after one year.

Over the next 22 years, Brown was all over the place coaching basketball, including a five-year run in Spain and an annual summer gig (through 1987) in Puerto Rico. In 2003-04, Herb joined with his brother to coach Detroit to the NBA championship.

“An unforgettable experience,” Brown says. “We had terrific guys — Rip Hamilton, Chauncey Billups, Rasheed and Ben Wallace, Tayshaun Prince and a great bench. They practiced hard every day. Never a problem with anybody not showing up for practice. The only difficulty was in trying to get (7-footer) Darko Milicic to understand he wasn’t good enough at that stage. It was a terrific bunch of people and fun to be around.”

Herb also coached with his brother in Philadelphia, Indiana and Charlotte. There was friction at times.

“I got along fine with Larry,” Herb says. “I’d try to watch out for his back. I learned a lot. It was a little humiliating at times. He knew he could use me if he had to vent. He felt he had to show favoritism to other people because he didn’t want to show it to me as his brother.

“Hey, my brother is a very sensitive guy. I understood that. He’s blood, man. He was good to me. And I love him dearly.”

The year with his brother in Detroit was Herb’s favorite stop, but also enjoyed his one season in Phoenix working with Wetzel as head coach of the Suns in 1987-88.

“John is one of the best people I’ve come across,” Brown says. “Salt of the earth.”

Brown’s final coaching stop was on The Bluff assisting Reveno during the 2014-15 season. By the end of the season, Brown had turned 79. There’s no question, he is a coaching lifer.

“If somebody called me today and asked, ‘You want to be an assistant?,’ I’d go in a minute,” Brown says. “I have enough energy. I’m driven.”

Brown’s granddaughter Jenna Brown is a 5-10 junior guard who is redshirting at Stanford this year after knee surgery. She made the Pac-12 Academic Honor Roll last season. She is the only one of his grandchildren who is not living back East.

Even if he’s not coaching, Herb Brown will never be far from a gym.

“I’ll watch my grandkids play,” he says. “Furman is within 10 to 15 minutes of where we’ll live. There’s a high school in town. The head coach at Belmont Abbey, Dan Ficke, is the son of one of my closest friends. That’s an hour away.

I’ll try to connect with those people.”

Herb’s mother lived to the age of 106. I’m guessing he has plenty of time left to embrace the game that he loves.