He Wants a Shot--That’s All : Brown Adjusts His Attitude at Summer Pro League

IRVINE — Chris Brown can still shoot. That much, at least, didn’t change.

The textbook form, the smooth release, the seemingly unlimited range that rendered outstretched zones and best-intentioned defenders useless--these tools remain in Brown’s possession. He proved as much in his last college basketball game, which in fact was only about four months ago although Brown’s mind and body tell him otherwise.

Brown is on the outskirts of the basketball world, a place in which he was recently comfortable and known. And the skill that made him such hasn’t reopened many doors so far.

Now the former UC Irvine guard wonders--and worries--if he will ever make it back. He’ll need some luck, and even if he gets a break his options probably won’t be as limitless as he thinks. But Brown still believes in that jump shot of his, which is enough to keep him going--for a while, anyway.

“Last season was the most frustrating, roughest . . . it was the worst basketball season of my life,” Brown said. “But I feel like I can make it [in professional basketball] if I just get a shot at it. I know it would work out if people would just still believe in me because, really, nothing has changed.”

Many things have, though, especially other people’s perception of Brown after his tumultuous final season with the Anteaters.

He led the nation in three-point shooting as a junior. Brown, 22, broke school and Big West Conference records en route to nearly shooting the lowly Anteaters into the NCAA tournament in his first season after transferring from Bakersfield College. His senior season turned out quite the opposite, marked by suspensions and lack of playing time that left him angry and unmotivated.

Moreover, in Brown’s mind, what happened has hurt his chances to play professionally. Brown is living with a friend in Santa Ana and working at a library on campus while he tries to sort through the mess. He hasn’t met an agent willing to represent him and he has about a year’s worth of course work remaining to earn a degree in drama.

The Summer Pro League, a showcase for current professional players and those seeking jobs in the NBA or overseas, opened July 12 at the Pyramid. Brown couldn’t find a team that wanted him until Monday, when he caught on with a team representing International Pro Management, but his playing time isn’t guaranteed.

“For a guy in his position, just having one good game could help,” said agent David Spencer, President of Westwood-based International Pro Management. “It’s a matter of the right person seeing you in the right situation.”

Brown is eager for a better situation.

“I used to sit in my room and cry,” Brown said. “I just didn’t see what I did to deserve this. I called my mom every day and she just kept telling me, ‘Don’t worry, it’s not always going to be like this.’ ”

Brown’s senior season stirred a lot of excitement in the Anteater basketball program. With Brown and the best recruiting class in Coach Rod Baker’s three-year tenure, good times seemed inevitable. However, problems quickly surfaced.

Baker suspended Brown for one game during the exhibition season because he missed team study sessions. Baker reinstated Brown before Irvine’s season opener against Oklahoma, which in retrospect might have done more harm than good.

Brown was born and reared in Muskogee, Okla. The Anteaters scheduled the Sooners because of Brown. But his homecoming, as with many things that followed, didn’t meet expectations.

He scored nine points on one of six three-point shots and six free throws in the Sooners’ 99-77 victory, providing few encouraging moments for his 100 family members and friends in attendance. Today, Baker believes that game triggered Brown’s season-killing tailspin.

Baker placed many players new to the program in key roles. First-year Oklahoma Coach Kelvin Sampson knew what Brown did well and had the most videotape of him in action. Thus, Sampson’s plan was to shut down Brown and see if the other Anteaters could make the difference. They couldn’t.

“It made perfectly good sense,” Baker said. “Not knowing what [freshman forward] Kevin Simmons was going to be about, not knowing what [junior guard] Raimonds Miglinieks was going to be about, not knowing about [junior forward] Michael Tate or some of the other guys, you know if you take away Chris Brown you’ve got a chance.

“They really focused on him. The guys that Kelvin assigned to guard Chris, he had them all in a lather. He told them, ‘He can’t be involved in this game. Take him away.’ You couple that with the fact that the only reason we’re playing that game is because of him and . . . I don’t know if he ever recovered from that.”

Brown disagrees. Although disappointing, the Oklahoma game wasn’t a defining moment, Brown maintains. Whatever the case, Brown wasn’t the same.

He continued to lead the team in scoring early in the season, but the drop-off in his production was marked. His average fell six points from the previous season to 11.4. Even more alarming to Baker and his staff was that Brown’s three-point field goals average dropped from 4.7 to 2.8.

Then, on Jan. 6, Brown sank to his low point in the program.

Baker again suspended Brown, this time for two games, saying he wanted to give Brown some time “so he can reassess his priorities in regards to this team.” Brown didn’t play in road games against Nevada Las Vegas and New Mexico State, generally regarded as the toughest Big West trip every season. What especially upset Brown was how he learned about the suspension and what he believed to be the reasoning behind the decision.

“Right before practice, a teammate of mine says to me, ‘Chris, I hear you’re not going on the trip to New Mexico [State] and Vegas.’ I hadn’t heard anything about it so I figured he was wrong. Then coach called everyone into the locker room.”

Brown said Baker handed out copies of a newspaper article printed that day in which Brown was quoted about his shooting woes. He made Brown read certain passages aloud to his teammates and the coaches, passages in which Brown talked about how his problems might hurt his chances to earn a professional contract.

“He was telling the team how I got caught up in the situation of my struggling, and how I’m just out of it,” Brown said. “At the time, I didn’t know what he was getting at. Then he wrote examples on the blackboard [from the story] where I said ‘I’ or ‘me’.

“So basically I’m being selfish now because I didn’t mention anything about the team. But the article wasn’t about the team, it was about Brown struggling as a shooter at this point. I still feel what I said was nothing bad at all.”

The story was simply the final straw for Baker. Although he didn’t elaborate at the time, he now explains he felt forced to act because Brown’s problems were impacting the team.

“It got to a point where the situation had to be addressed,” Baker said. “It just became a situation where, at that time, that should not have been his focus in my opinion. His focus should have been more on what is it that’s not happening right for me in relationship with this team.”

Never one of the more outgoing Anteaters, Brown became more withdrawn after returning from his suspension. He felt betrayed by Baker and the assistant coaches and his shots still weren’t falling.

“In the beginning of the season I was struggling with my shot, but I wasn’t worried,” Brown said. “Every year I go through a little stage where I struggle, it just so happens this year was a little longer.

“That suspension just put another sand bag on my back. I just needed the coaches to be patient with me.”

Freshman guard Brian Keefe supplanted Brown in the starting lineup and Brown never regained the starting position. As his field-goal percentage dropped, so did Brown’s playing time to the point he eventually felt like “just a guy who was there for practice.”

He averaged only 8.4 points last season, making 31% of his field-goal attempts overall and 30% of his three-point tries. But, as Brown points out, the Anteaters didn’t soar with him out of the picture either. Irvine had a record of 13-16--its fourth consecutive losing season under Baker.

Baker said Brown’s aloofness further eroded his relationship with his teammates, and even Brown characterized the situation as “just trying to tolerate them on the court.” Baker encouraged Brown to become a more vocal and supportive player.

“I don’t know if it’s so much that he sulks, but he’s emotional and he allows you to see it,” Baker said. “You as an opponent or you as a player know exactly how he’s feeling.

“After he came back, I said to him, ‘Chris, you need to kind of come out of yourself a little bit more. Get a little bit more of a smile on your face and really take the opportunity now to work this thing out. You’re going to have to deal with your teammates.’ He did it for a day or so, but he was never able to get over the hump.”

Brown doesn’t believe that would have helped much because he said his coaches and teammates just didn’t understand him.

“I’ve always been the type of person who is really quiet and I don’t show any type of facial expression,” he said. “You can look at me sometimes and think I’m upset, and there won’t be a thing wrong with me.”

However, Brown admits he was a less-than-ideal teammate.

During timeouts, the entire team huddled around Baker--except for Brown. He usually stood off to the side only halfheartedly paying attention. He sat at the end of the bench beside players who only take off their warmups during lopsided Irvine victories--meaning rarely. He often hung his head and draped a towel on it to cover his face after being pulled from games.

Baker wanted Brown to work on his ballhandling and defense during the summer between his junior and senior seasons. Brown said he put in countless hours doing so by himself. But Baker didn’t see an appreciable difference.

“If I think your vocabulary is weak and I say, ‘Come so the tutors can help you work on your vocabulary,’ and you say, ‘No, I’m OK. I’ll take care of it on my own,’ that’s fine. But if six months later your vocabulary is no better, then you tell me.”

Despite his problems, Brown said he never thought of quitting. Midway through the second half of his final college game, Brown came off the bench and made five threes in Irvine’s 88-69 loss to Nevada in the semifinals of the Big West tournament.

He hadn’t played a minute in the previous three games after having been the toast of the tournament the season before. He made 24 three-pointers during the Anteaters’ run to the tournament final and was co-most valuable player of the tournament. Baker respected his performance in his last game.

“He could have, if he wanted to, made a statement to me and his teammates like, ‘Fine, now you need me. Now I’ll show you,’ but he didn’t,” Baker said. “He did the exact opposite. He went out there and played his butt off and really tried to help us win the game. I didn’t know what he was going to do, but I was more than prepared for anything.”

Baker said he would like nothing more than to see Brown make it in professional basketball.

“I guess he feels comfortable talking about the things I took away from him, and I don’t have a problem with that,” Baker said. “But the truly successful people are the people who face up to what they are short on and try to do something about it.

“Right now, it’s all in Chris’ lap. What he should be doing is working as hard as he can to prove me wrong. And I would be very happy to find out I was wrong.”