kwame brown

8/13/2019 Kwame Brown

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26/01/13 21:57Growing Pains

Pgina 1 de 14http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/28/AR2006112800709_pf.html

Growing PainsThe Wizards' decision to make a 19-year-old kid from

the Georgia boondocks the NBA's No. 1 draft pick couldbring Kwame Brown $12 million. What it cost himremains to be seen.

By Sally JenkinsSunday, April 21, 2002

Kwame Brown knows more than he should about somethings, such as certain aspects of human nature, and lessthan he should about others, such as nutrition, how totreat a good suit, and when to throw the lob pass. What

Brown knows and what he doesn't is a consequence ofhis age, newly 20, and where he's from, the saw grasslowlands of Georgia, where crook-armed silhouettes ofshrimp boats move against the horizon and misshapen oaks draped with gothic-gray moss line the meltingtar streets, so sticky-hot that the children, Brown until recently one of them, hitch up their pants and hopfrom patch of grass to patch of grass.

Brown's route to the National Basketball Association has been a similarly awkward hop, from anovercrowded home with a sagging porch in Brunswick, Ga., to the $11.9 million patch of grass offeredhim by the Washington Wizards last June, when Michael Jordan made him the NBA's No. 1 draft pick and

gave him a three-year contract. The presumption behind this investment is that Brown will becomeanother Kobe Bryant or Kevin Garnett, the next great young thing. The truth is that, in practice, the hop istoo big: Turning a teenager from a sleepy shrimp port, not long out of puberty, into a multimillionaireNBA professional is a traumatic process. And notjust for Brown, either. For the adults, too.

Brown has been lectured and scolded and instructed, advised. And, perhaps, warped. The voices haveoverwhelmed him. They run together, all of them telling him what is best for him. "Most people," he says,"are wrong." He is still young enough to have a faintly wounded set to his jaw, and a reflexive honesty ashe considers a rookie season that, until the very end, was a public humiliation. "There's a part of me thatquestions, when your confidence drops like mine did, are you a good ballplayer and do you deserve to behere, or what?" he says. "You're just scared. Scared to do anything."

Brown is sitting in Clyde's restaurant in Chevy Chase, regarding with suspicion a chicken sandwich,which has been served to him on unfamiliar bread. Among the many revelations of his profoundlydislocating and confusing rookie seasonwith the Wizards are the things that some people will eat.

On a road trip to Boston, the Wizards took him to an elegant French restaurant. Brown was not justshocked, but outraged, to discover that the restaurant did not serve French dressing. "Can you believethat?" he says. "No French dressing. In a French restaurant."

Then there was the matter of the salad itself. "It was tree roots," he says disgustedly. "Leaves. Andbranches."

For weeks afterward, Brown took a bottle of store-bought French dressing with him whenever he went out
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to dinner.

On this particular day Brown is having lunch at Clyde's with Duane Ferrell, a retired 13-year NBA veteranwho has been hired by the Wizards to mentor him through his first season, and Maureen Nasser, theirdirector of public relations.

A plate of strangely shaped fried seafood arrives at the table.

"Is that like fried shrimp?" he asks.

"That's calamari," Nasser says. "It's squid."

"You shouldn't have told him that," Ferrell says.

Brown looks stricken.

"Squid," he repeats.

"You should have just let him eat it," Ferrell says with a laugh.

What Brown knows, and what he does not, has been a source of continual surprise for the Wizards, andthey have not always been amusing surprises, either. The fact is, when Jordan, in his role as the team'schief executive, and Coach Doug Collins decided to make a 19-year-old fresh from his senior prom atGlynn Academy the No. 1 draft pick, they had no idea what they were actually getting themselves into.Isiah Thomas, the head coach of the Indiana Pacers, tried to tell them. "You're going to be shocked,"Thomas said. "He won't know a thing about basketball."

Basketball was the least of it. With Brown, the Wizards have found themselves in the business of childrearing, of caring for a 6-foot-11 baby-man who has required far more careful handling and feeding thanthey bargained for.

He fooled them. The Wizards' youngest player only looked fully formed. The problem was Brown'sdeceptive physique; he seemed so ready-made. He was beautiful, they all agreed, your eye couldn't helpbut go to him, in everything he did, just picking up the ball. He was lightning quick for a big man, and hecould handle the ball, which meant he could make a play the length of the floor. "Skills people dreamabout," Collins says. When he worked out against fellow high schooler Tyson Chandler, he had noconscience whatsoever, which was what they liked most; he was reckless and unschooled and hedecimated Chandler in one on one, and oh, they'd seen things like this before, hadn't they, and what it was,well, it was the real thing.

And he seemed so level-headed, smart and self-assured. "If you draft me, I'll never disappoint you," hetold Jordan.

"He's mature, articulate, he's 6-11, and got all this talent, and you think he's ready to help us immediately,"Collins says. What they couldn't see was the inside of him. The lungs that were underdeveloped. Thesoftness that came from never having been really pushed, from not having lived alone in a big city, fromnever having been away from his mother. "Inside, he's mush," says his youth pastor from Brunswick, theRev. John Williams.

There was the time they discovered that he was eating Popeyes fried chicken for every meal, includingbreakfast, because he didn't really know how to grocery-shop. The sports management firm that representsBrown, SFX, assigned Richard J. Lopez, a 36-year-old business manager, to shepherd him. Lopez found


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that he essentially became a parent.

Lopez took Brown to a Giant supermarket and helped him fill a cart with food. Then Lopez drove Brownhome to his rented apartment in Alexandria and hard-boiled a dozen eggs for him and put them in therefrigerator.

One morning before a Wizards game, Brown called Lopez, and said, "I have nothing to wear. Everything's

dirty."

Lopez knew Brown had a closet full of new suits -- he had helped hang them there. "Kwame," heexplained, "you have to take those suits to the dry cleaners." That was fine, Brown said, but he didn'tknow how to do that, and he still didn't have anything to wear.

Lopez drove over to Brown's apartment, and found the suits in a heap by the bed. Each time Brown woreone, he would take it off, wad it up and throw it in a corner.

Lopez picked up a suit from the pile, got out the iron, and began ironing.

It was Lopez who helped Brown find his apartment, a four-bedroom condo in Alexandria. Lopez also gothim a deal on a Mercedes S500, and a free cell phone, and helped him set up his cable service, and get anATM card, and all the other things that go with being an adult. At first, Brown's mother, Joyce, was thereto help, and there was a temporary roommate to keep him company, an acquaintance from Brunswickattending Howard Law School. But then his mother went home to care for her other children, and theroommate got a place closer to campus.

Finally, the condo was empty, except for Brown and Lopez. Brown looked at his manager. "Are yougoing to stay over?" he asked tentatively. Lopez, stunned, realized Brown had never spent the night alonebefore. Lopez took off his shoes.

A Man's Job

Brown's naivete poses the question once again: Is it wise for the NBA to make a foray into surrogateparenting of kids fresh from high school? What's to be done with a Kwame Brown? What is the nature ofthe league's responsibility to such a tender rookie? No one is quite sure. "There's a special kind of care andhandling they need," says Commissioner David Stern. "The overriding issue for me is whether thepressure of life in the NBA might be too much . . . The question is whether he will suffer any permanentsetbacks by being tossed in the oil too soon."

Is it worth the trouble? If nothing else, clubs will take a hard look at the issue from a market standpoint.

Brown was just one of three high schoolers taken among the top five, along with Tyson Chandler andEddy Curry, now playing alongside each other in Chicago. But Duke graduate Shane Battier has been afar more mature and productive rookie for the Memphis Grizzlies, averaging about 14 points a game.Even the Wizards' own Brendan Haywood, out of North Carolina, has offered more immediate help.

Next to them, Brown's floundering has been painful to watch. He has been benched, placed on the injuredlist, and staggered by self-doubt. Only in the last month of the season did he begin to look like he mightsomeday become the starting power forward the Wizards initially projected him as.

Not even the tutelage of Jordan has been able to ease Brown's entry into the league. Wasn't Jordan

supposed to help guide this rough, raw, young, incompletely formed player into professionalism? Jordanfirmly contends that Brown is right on schedule. "My expectations for him were never as high as his, orother people's," Jordan says. "He's never been taught."


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But nobody pretends anymore that this is a fairy tale, unless it is a fairy tale with a cautionary moral.Stern, for one, is convinced that at least a couple of years of college produce happier young men and morefundamentally sound ballplayers. And he thinks that others in the NBA are watching the Kwame Brownsaga unfold, and in doing so may find an antidote to irrational exuberance in the trading of player futures."In a funny way, I think there might be a market adjustment," Stern says. "That will be ameliorative in itsown right."

Stern wants to know exactly what Jordan and the Wizards expected when they drafted a 19-year-oldstraight out of high school. "What we're finding is that a 19-year-old would tend to respond like . . . a 19-year-old," says Stern. "Who should that surprise?"

At least one person, Collins, is ready to admit that he misjudged Brown's readiness to enter the league."It's not just the education of Kwame Brown," says Collins wearily. "It was the education of DougCollins."

Hard Time

Brunswick, population 15,600, is a place of seedy beauty, that contradictory grace possessed by the OldSouth, with its decadent residue and peeling antebellum wretchedness alongside old wealth, all of itbathed in sublime breezes. Brown's childhood home is a clapboard A-frame with torn screens and acollapsing sofa on a sagging porch, as if it all had given way from the weight of holding the eight Brownchildren and their single mother, Joyce.

Where Brown is from, ordinary career options range from wielding a sponge at a carwash to a spatula at afast-food restaurant. These are some of the jobs held by his brothers. And then there are the murkier andmore tawdry employments that have landed four of them in jail. One of the earliest elements of Brown'seducation was simply: Don't do what they did.

"They made every bad decision that you could possibly make, and I saw the ending result," he says. "So itwas almost like a test that I already had the answer for. All I had to do was fill in the blanks. I just did thetotal opposite."

Brown's oldest brother, Willie James Brown Jr., 29, is serving a 121/2-year sentence in federal prison inJesup, Ga., for conspiracy to sell narcotics, more specifically, for distributing crack. Tolbert Lee Brown,25, was convicted of shooting a man and is serving a 15-year sentence in the Wilcox (Ga.) State Prison foraggravated assault. Two other brothers, Alton and Tarik, have had lesser difficulties with the law.

Where Brown is from, religion can be a fairly desperate matter, a begging for some explanation andimprobable rescue from the unpayable bills and empty refrigerators and the illnesses that come from

living in stagnation and deprivation -- in the case of Joyce Brown, the gnarling arthritis, or the kidneydisease that left her with just one, or the degenerative disk in her back from cleaning under all those bedsat the local Holiday Inn. It was at the urging of Reverend Ike, the television preacher, that Joyce Brownfinally left her physically abusive husband, Willie James Brown, once and for all after 17 years.

Joyce Brown met and married Willie, a truck driver from Charleston, S.C., when she was barely 20. Shewas born and reared in Brunswick; her father was a fisherman and her mother worked in a cannery. Willieoffered her a ticket out of town, and to be a father to her first child, Carla Yvette, who is now 32 and livesin Smithfield, Va. Seven more children came in close succession, Willie James Jr., Tolbert, Alton, Tabari,Tarik, Kwame and Akeem.

No one in the family could anticipate when Willie would turn ugly and administer a beating. Joyce Brownis 6-2 and not easily bullied. She tried to leave, she says, "almost every year. I'd get away, and he'd get me


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right back." She would flee to Brunswick, and he would come after her, and tell her, "These are mychildren. They belong to me. You might leave, but you aren't taking them." That was his way, she says, oftelling her, "You're not going nowhere."

She suspected he was using speed when she found a handful of multicolored pills in his pocket, whichwould have explained his violent mood swings. "There were some good days and some bad days," shesays. "There were some ups and downs. I had to keep my head. The stuff I went through, it was pretty

bad. Somebody needs psychological help to get through it. And then, you rely on God. I was raised in thechurch, so I had to grab my faith, and I started digging deep for the spirit. Because I was in a deep need,and I could have just given up."

At one point, when Kwame was 5, certain that her husband was coming after her once again, she wasdesperate enough to write to the Reverend Ike, explaining her situation and asking for help. "What shouldI do?" she asked.

Some time later, she received a reply. As she remembers it, the TV preacher wrote, "He's going to killsomebody. But it's not going to be you. When your mother gave birth to you, she gave birth to anAmazon."

This time, when Willie appeared in Brunswick, she jabbed her finger at him and quoted the Reverend Ike."You're going to kill somebody. But it's not going to be me."

In 1990, Willie James Brown was convicted of murdering his 22-year-old girlfriend with an ax handle. Heis serving a life sentence in the Evans Correctional Institution near Bennettsville, S.C. Kwame has notseen him since he was 6 or 7, and says he has no desire to.

His father's absence was a relief for everyone. But it left Joyce alone with a houseful of kids -- big, tallones with large appetites -- and no paycheck. Joyce got jobs cleaning rooms at the local hotels. The work

told on her back. Every day she would have to shove the huge bureaus away from the wall and vacuumbehind them. She would flip the heavy mattresses back and sweep under the beds.

"My mom struggled day in and day out," says Tabari Brown, 22, a junior and a basketball player atJacksonville University. "My brothers hated to see her like that." When Joyce would get her paycheck, shewould buy food and pack the refrigerator with it. The boys would pillage it. "When it was gone, it wasgone," Tabari says, "and it was gone for a while. And that's when my brothers used to have to do thatstuff. They'd go out in the streets."

One evening, early this season, Brown drove to a Wizards game with Lopez in his Mercedes S500. In themidst of a chat about his halting pro career, he suddenly started talking about his childhood. Lopez asked

him what his dreams had been.

"Did you ever imagine?" Lopez asked.

"Yeah," Brown said, "I used to imagine I was full."

Joyce pleaded with her sons to stay out of trouble, and badgered them to go with her on Sundays to theChurch of Greater Works. "It was hurting her, what they had to do to help her," Tabari says. "She wasn'ttoo happy with any of that, the whole situation. She'd tell them don't do that. They'd come back at her like,how you think you going to do without it? She'd cry."

According to Tabari, the older brothers attempted to shelter the younger boys; it was becoming apparentthe younger ones might parlay their athletic talent into an exit. At night, Kwame and Tabari would sneak


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out of the house and follow the older Browns to the local park, where they hung out. Tolbert would wavethem off. "Get out of here, go the other way."

Kwame was close to his mother. He was her most talkative son, a chatterbox, and a pleaser. He tended todo what she asked him to. "Mama, I'm not going nowhere," he'd tease her. "You can put everybody elseout of the house when they're 18, but I'll be here. I'm not going anywhere. I'll be right here with you."

"You don't go to college, you getting out of here," she'd say.

God's Work

By the time Brown was a freshman in high school, he was 6-foot-6 and he was already getting recruitingletters from the University of Florida. But he had a temper. In one game, he slammed a wall and hurt hishand when he missed a layup. He also had a tendency toward aimlessness, and his grades were uneven.

Glynn Academy called in John Williams, who runs the Gathering Place, a youth ministry, and who workswith troubled kids in the school system. Williams offered Brown a deal: If he got his grades up, he'd lethim drive his gray Buick. Clearly, Williams is not your average pastor. He's not opposed to bribing

members of his flock, or manhandling them. He and Brown became close friends; if Brown wasn't in thegym, he was with Mr. John, as he called him.

His methods with Brown weren't always gentle. One afternoon, Williams was in the principal's officewhen a teacher came in and complained that Brown was supposed to be studying for a major test, andinstead was in the gym again. "Can I handle this one?" Williams asked.

Williams found Brown shooting baskets and fooling around with a crowd of people in the gym. He calledhim over to the sideline.

"What?" Brown asked.

"I need to tell you something," Williams said.

"Are you going to hit me?" Brown asked.

"I'm not going to hit you. Lean down, I don't want everybody to hear."

Brown leaned down. He had just gotten his ear pierced, and he had a small wooden post in his earlobe.Williams grabbed it and twisted it.

"You're going in that classroom and going to study for that test, and you're going to pass it."

The post broke off in Brown's ear. Williams led him down the hall and pushed him into the classroom.Brown, his ear bleeding and tears streaming down his face, slumped in a chair. He passed the test --eventually he would make honor roll his last four semesters of high school.

Brown grew five inches his sophomore year, and Florida stepped up its recruitment. Williams and JoyceBrown drove him to Gainesville, Fla., and showed him the campus. Williams said, "You can have this ifyou want it." Brown committed to play for Florida Coach Billy Donovan.

In Brown's senior year, it became apparent that NBA scouts were looking at him. He averaged 20.1

points, 13.3 rebounds and 5.8 blocked shots at Glynn Academy. Donovan felt compelled to tell Brownwhat he knew, which was that he was projected to go in the top five, maybe even top three, if he decided


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to declare himself eligible for the draft.

"Mr. John, am I that good?" Brown asked.

"Man, I don't know. Apparently so."

In January 2001, just as Brown was evaluating whether to make himself available for the draft, he was

driving around town with Tarik and one of his cousins when someone shot out the back window of theircar. The bullet, he told an Orlando Sentinel reporter, could have hit any of them. "It didn't have a name onit," he said.

That spring, Brown declared for the draft. The decision to forgo college meant relinquishing his youth,and he knew it. But what was the option? To spend a couple of years at Florida and maybe risk injury, or adecline in his draft status? Or get another car window shot out hanging around Brunswick on springbreak? It wasn't a difficult choice.

Joyce Brown's religion comes in a roux with folklore. A woodpecker pecking means that someone on thestreet will soon die. She believes this as fervently as she believes that it was through her prayer that her

son was handpicked by Jordan to play for the Washington Wizards. On June 27, the Wizards made Brownthe first high school player ever to be the first pick and gave him a contract worth nearly $12 million.

This was God's work. "When God put Kwame in that place, it was for this family," Joyce says. "We had along, hard road."

The Wizards, on the other hand, wanted to see less of God's work, and more work from Kwame Brownhimself.

The Wrong Foot

On the day that Brown was officially introduced as a Wizard, he and his mother met with Jordan andCollins just prior to the press conference. Jordan told Brown it was important that he make the right kindof start. "If you make bad decisions, you make it hard for us to get you back on course," Jordan cautionedhim. "So the best thing is to just stay on course. It's easier to keep you straight than to try to get you backon track."

The exact opposite happened. Brown was continually distracted by his new status. Brunswick threw him aparade and gave him a key to the city, but life there became so frenzied he couldn't get any peace. Joycecame home one evening to find her living room full of strangers. "Who are all these people in my house?"she demanded. They were mostly autograph seekers. Brown was back in his bedroom, with the door

closed.

He was hounded by neighbors and strangers who wanted favors, or money, or just to hang around. Oldfriends resented it if he didn't call or show them enough attention. "Now you think you're all that," theysaid. Every local school principal insisted he come speak to the student body. When he tried to say no,they would scold him for being too good for Brunswick.

"The thing about a fishbowl is, it has no corners," he says.

He signed endorsement contracts with Adidas, Sprite, Cingular. He suddenly had appearances, interviewsand business meetings. He had to hire accountants and managers to oversee his money.

After the draft, Brown went to Gainesville, where he wanted to spend part of the summer working out at


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the university, with some of his college-bound friends. In a bar one night, he danced with the wrong girl.Her boyfriend took a swing at him. Brown swung back -- and injured his hand.

The injury was the first in a series of mistakes that set him back. Collins was on vacation in Illinois whenhe heard that Brown had hurt his hand. He cut short his trip and returned to Washington, to spend sometime with his new protege, and "to try to help him get settled." Collins discovered that Brown was alreadyhaving difficulty juggling the demands on him. The first thing he noticed was how much Brown's cell

phone rang. "The phone would ring, and he'd say, 'This is my brother in prison and he wants money.' Ithought, 'Oh my goodness.' "

"Turn that off," Collins advised, pointing at the cell phone.

Somehow, despite the best intentions on the part of SFX and the Wizards organization, Brown's entry intothe league was disorganized. His lead agent, Arn Tellem of SFX, had dealt with schoolboys before,representing Kobe Bryant and Tracy McGrady. But Brown's circumstances were unique: No teenager hadever been the top draft choice, handpicked by Jordan, with all of the attendant pressures.

"The truth? There was no plan," Lopez says. "Kwame is the only one in this situation," Lopez maintains."He moved from Georgia, from a very homey, big family. And now he was alone. This is unique."

Brown listened to too many so-called experts, who told him he needed to bulk up. He gained 20 pounds,ballooning to 255. He reported to training camp in Wilmington, N.C., heavy and already somewhatoverwhelmed. He was promptly blasted by Collins for being out of shape. Brown, Collins declared, wasprobably three months behind "where I want him to be right now because he lost a lot this summer."Collins's mood would only get worse.

Brown's missteps might not have been so irksome if the Wizards' prospects hadn't changed dramaticallywith Jordan's decision to leave the front office and return as a player. Suddenly, instead of building

slowly, over a period of years, the Wizards wanted to make the playoffs now to justify Jordan's grandexperiment. "The whole thing changed," says Lopez. "M.J. and Collins were two different guys after M.J.decided to return. It's not negative, that's just the way it was. Now you didn't have time to develop this kid;instead it was about making the comeback worthwhile. Now it was, we've got to go ballistic to get to theplayoffs."

It was evident Brown would not be able to help them right away, as hoped. The tempo of pro workoutscaused Brown back spasms. "He had a bad back, a sore hamstring," Collins says. "You compound andcomplicate his task by his horrible condition. Now you start to struggle, lose confidence. And it's a spiral."

Collins was increasingly aghast at what Brown didn't know. There were so many simple things he had to

learn: when to lob, when to throw a chest pass, when to throw a bounce pass. Things kids who've gone tobasketball camps and colleges already know. Like footwork. "He was like a guy who wants to go intohigh finance, and he only took a couple of classes," says Wizards forward Popeye Jones.

How was Brown supposed to learn the plays, and the options off the plays, when he didn't even knowproper positioning? "Forget on the NBA level," Collins says. "We're talking just basketball."

He had a lingering adolescent laziness that drove his handlers crazy. So did his childish attention span. Atfirst Collins and Jordan and the rest of the Wizards alternated fatherly speeches on responsibility withgentle needling. But then they began to lose patience.

When Brown twisted an ankle during an exhibition game and untied his shoe on the bench, Jordan said,"Lace that thing up. I've played with ankles 45 times worse than that."


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When Collins tried to set up an offense, Brown might giggle or chat with a teammate. "He starts movingwhile I'm trying to teach," Collins says. On the floor, he would be totally lost, have no idea what the playwas. Collins would have to explain it all over again.

And, like any teenager, Brown always had an answer back.

"But . . ." he would say.

"Just listen," Collins would snap. "I don't need you to say anything back."

Nothing Brown did seemed to please Collins. The man was as spiky as his cropped hair, one minutefatherly, the next screaming with impatience, and then, finally, cold. Every practice was the occasion of amisstep. No sooner would Brown touch the ball, it seemed, than Collins would bark at him.

"Kwame, you can't play on a railroad track. You have to be able to change speed."

Brown would just stare back, seemingly uncomprehending. "Kwame, you're never in a proper position ifyou aren't in a position to help. You're the last line of defense." He would seem to ignore the simplest

directions. Collins would say, "Watch out for the lob, watch out for the lob!" Ten seconds later, a lobwould go over his head.

"I wish you would stop correcting me and just let me play," he implored Collins one day.

"Kwame, you don't know how to play," Collins said.

And there was Jordan. He wasn't the mentor that Brown had expected. With the comeback, he had hisown problems, including a sore knee. He could be warm, but he could be hard, too, coolly judging, anddemanding. He liked to haze the rookies in small, collegiate ways. Jordan would grab a basketball, anddrop-kick it high into the stands and make them run the stairs to retrieve it.

Jordan instructed by example. He would ostentatiously arrive in the locker room early and watch tapeafter tape of opponents, loudly explaining tendencies to younger players. The underlying implication was,Be Like Mike. "He's been hard, he's been stern, he's been tough," Brown says.

Brown sprained an ankle in the opener at New York on October 30 and missed the next four games. Hestarted two games in November, but was clearly out of his depth; two points and a rebound was all theWizards could expect. "Just burning up minutes, trying not to make mistakes," is how Brown describedhis performance. "Hopefully, your guy doesn't score and you won't do anything to make yourself lookbad."

Meanwhile, the team got off to a wretched 2-9 start. Brown felt helpless, and guilty for not contributing."It's hard, because you want to play well and help the organization and you don't want to come in and let'em down, and you can't," he says. "You can't step in and step up to the job."

Brown was vividly aware of how he compared with other high school rookies -- he was off to a muchslower start than Bryant, or McGrady, or Garnett ever had. He was even lagging behind Eddy Curry andTyson Chandler, who were playing whole periods at a time for the Chicago Bulls. It was embarrassing;here he was the No. 1 pick, and he wasn't playing.

His teammates by turns tutored and lectured and scolded. "A lot of people talk at me," Brown observes."Very few speak with me."


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By midseason, Brown's face had broken out. He had circles under his eyes. He was having such troublebreathing during practices that Collins feared he was seriously ill. It turned out he had exercise-

induced asthma, because his lungs weren't developed enough for his size, and couldn't cope with the paceof NBA workouts. Basically, he had never worked hard -- he simply didn't know how.

"When are you going to quit being a baby and grow up?" Collins would shout at him.

It was Collins's job to harden Brown, to teach him how to suffer, and in some ways the process was astraumatic for him as it was for his pupil. "I'm sure he thinks I'm this tough guy," Collins says. Collins hasnot enjoyed being the chief villain of Brown's existence, and his self-doubt is palpable. Popeye Jonesobserves, "Doug Collins was new at this, too. He had never coached a high school player." Collins wishesnow he had understood just how vulnerable Brown was, emotionally and physically, beneath that bigbody. "I wish I could throw a switch and go back to training camp," Collins says. "I wish I could startover." What would he have done different? "Understand, seen his side more," Collins says.

"I love Kwame," Collins continues. "I don't really think he comprehends how much I care, and he won'tfor two or three years."

Collins was right. Not only didn't Brown feel cared for, at times he felt isolated. Mostly, his teammateswere involved in their own lives. He was lonely. "It's boring," he says.

It didn't help that he was separated from the redoubtable Joyce Brown. After an initial two-week visit toget him settled, she returned to Brunswick. She was only able to visit occasionally. They talked on thephone a couple of times a day.

Washington was disorienting. Accustomed to country lanes, he was confused by the hectic traffic circlesand the noise. When he went to breakfast, the waiters looked at him blankly when he asked for grits and

cold milk. The Wizards wanted him to rent an apartment near MCI Center, but he couldn't bear the idea.He restricted his movements to a triangle, from his condo, to the arena, to Lopez's SFX office inFriendship Heights. There was no one else in his circumference. He felt apart from his old friends back inBrunswick. "I don't talk to people like I used to, because they can't relate." He felt the same about his newteammates. "Me and them, we can't even go to the same places."

He wasn't old enough to go to clubs or bars, and though Jones, Christian Laettner and Duane Ferrellbefriended him, they were a minimum of 10 years older, and they weren't exactly into PlayStation, as heis. Brown brightened up briefly when his brother Tabari visited from Jacksonville. Lopez drove them outto a mall in Anne Arundel County that had a huge game arcade. They bowled, played race car games. Itwas a rare carefree night.

Brown came off the bench on December 4 to record the first double-double of his career against SanAntonio's David Robinson and Tim Duncan, with 10 points and 12 rebounds. The Wizards hoped it wasthe start of something. But the next day, typically, he came to practice lethargic. By now Collins had hadit, and so had most of his teammates. Jordan was struggling with a bad knee and doing everything hecould to help turn the team around, and here was this kid who didn't know the meaning of work.

It was Brown's worst day as an NBA player. "The most physically demanding day of my entire life," hesays. Collins put the Wizards through a brutal, exhausting practice. The team was in a collective foulmood. Despite Brown's mini-breakthrough, the Wizards had lost yet again. "Everyone was arguing,

people were beating each other up," Brown says. But mostly, they took it out on him.

Brown couldn't do anything right. "He couldn't catch it, couldn't throw it, couldn't shoot it right," Jones


11/14



says. In a series of three-on-three drills, the Wizards banged him -- hard, intentionally. "He got pretty beataround," Jones says. Center Jahidi White knocked him to the ground -- and fell on top of him. Brown laythere, stunned and bruised.

"Get up, you aren't hurt," White said.

Brown got up, aching, holding his back. His gray practice shirt was soaked through. Nobody had any

sympathy for him. Not even Popeye Jones, the veteran who'd looked out for him the most. "It's time foryou to grow up," Jones told him, coldly. "Now. Today. Stand on your own two feet."

Collins, still not satisfied, ordered a set of punishing sprints. Brown hesitated. "I hurt my back," he said.

Collins wheeled. Now it was his turn. "Stop being a baby and start growing up and playing, and earningthe respect of your teammates," Collins shouted. "They're tired of you. They're tired of you gettingknocked down, and laying around. They're tired of you holding your back. And holding your head. Andholding your thumb. You're the one who has to be in that locker room, and meet them eye to eye."

Brown stared at his feet. "Do you want to play or not?" Collins snapped. No answer.

"Get off the court," Collins said disgustedly.

He sat in front of his locker trembling and crying. This is it, he thought, the league's not for me. I'mhorrible. The coach thinks I'm horrible. The whole team thinks I'm horrible. I can't even play. Then he goton a treadmill and ran as hard he could, for almost an hour.

After a while, Jordan came into the locker room. He sat on a bench with Brown, and put his arm aroundhim, and hugged him. "You're going to be all right," he said. For several minutes, he talked to Brown insoothing tones. "Doug is tough, but in a few years you'll understand how good he is," he said. They still

believed in him, Jordan affirmed. "We put our necks out for you," he said. "We think you have theingredients to be a great power forward for a long, long time."

To Brown, it meant everything. "He showed me a side you never read about," Brown says. "The M.J. whocomes over and picks you up and talks to you when you're down and out."

Dunk and Hope

That day turned the Wizards around -- they won their next nine games. But Brown's recovery wasn't soimmediate. Collins made a decision to back off. Anyone could see how it was wearing on the kid. "Hisface was broken out and he looked horrible," Collins says. One night, Collins said to his wife, Kathy, "I've

got to take the pressure off him." He decided to put Brown on the injured list. The excuse was a sore calf,but the real reason was that Collins wanted him to decompress.

Jordan, too, did all he could to take the heat off Brown. In his public statements he tried to lower the bar."The expectation was set before Kwame understood the magnitude of it," Jordan said. "He wants to liveup to it, but wanting, and having the tools to do it, are two different situations. To throw him out therewhen he doesn't have the tools yet would be a mistake."

Jordan understood better than anyone the embarrassment factor. Chandler and Curry were beingshowcased in Chicago, "but those guys aren't winning, either," Jordan said. "In the long run he'll be betteroff than those guys, by being able to learn about sacrifice and the components of winning, than scoring 20points for a last-place team."


12/14



Brown spent a long stretch watching from the bench. At first, he viewed it as a punishment. But it worked.He could learn at a slower pace, without a sense of guilt or urgency. He practiced hard with the team andlifted weights. The press forgot about him for a while, and no one asked him why he wasn't contributingmore, or compared him with Chandler and Curry. Gradually he started feeling better about himself. "Ithink the best thing we did was shut him down," Collins says now.

When he came back, he was a more relaxed player and a more consistent one. Collins, too, was gentler

with him -- though no less demanding. On a road trip to Boston, Collins called Brown to his room, andthey talked for more than an hour. "You got to help me, I'm failing here," Collins said. "I haven't been ableto bring out the best in you."

Brown pleaded again to be allowed to just go out and play, to stay on the floor and fight through hismistakes. Collins said, "Okay, I'm going to put you out there." On March 10 in Boston, Brown had one ofhis best sequences of the season -- he scored eight points in a five-minute stretch in the second quarter."He showed he could carry an offense all by himself," Jones says. "At 19, he carried us for a five-minutestretch. It was a joy to sit on the bench and holler his name."

But the very next night he had four quick turnovers in the first half. Collins benched him in the second.Afterward, Collins lectured him about being dependable. He would use playing time like a parent, Collinssaid. "The more I can trust you," he told Brown, "the later I'll let you stay out."

But the setbacks were temporary. Against Portland five days later, Brown put together another flashyperformance. He was provoked by the Trail Blazers' Rasheed Wallace, who ragged on him as they ran upand down the court.

"Come on, show me why you're the No. 1 pick," Wallace said. Brown answered -- he blew by Wallace fora baseline dunk. He ran upcourt with a huge grin. "Okay," Wallace said. "All right."

Against Denver on March 20, he had eight points, five rebounds, one assist, a steal and a block -- all injust 17 minutes. At one point, with the Wizards desperately needing a win to keep playoff hopes alive,Brown made one of his most confident plays of the season. He went up for a shot and got hit in the head.Once, he would have fallen down and grabbed his face. Instead he gathered himself and went up andscored. Collins looked down the bench and said, "That's growth."

After the game Collins added, "You might think of it as one basket. But to me it was much more thanthat."

Such stretches had Brown and everyone around him beaming. "I'm starting to see light at the end oftunnel, and I think there's going to be a rainbow there," Collins said. Jordan was also bullish on Brown. "I

see signs. He's freshly confident," Jordan said. "I see his smile and I know he's enjoying it." Brown evenkidded Jordan about being able to dunk on him. "I like that," Jordan said approvingly.

So . . . had he dunked on him?

"He hasn't come close," Jordan said.

A New Man

As important as his improvement on the court has been, there are also signs the No. 1 pick is learning to

manage his affairs off of it. He is taking better care of himself. He still hits takeout joints, but now hefrequents the salad bar at Wendy's instead of eating fried chicken at Popeyes. "We've talked about baked,not fried," Lopez says. He no longer carries his bottle of French dressing.


13/14



"He's learned vinaigrette," Lopez says.

He is newly mature in his dealings with Collins. "He wants me to do so well, so bad, that sometimesthings come out wrong," Brown says of Collins's past blowups. "But in the end he always comes back andtells me, 'I'm doing this to help you,' and I believe him. I don't think he's continually trying to hurt myfeelings or make me mad."

Toward the end of the season, when Collins explained something to him, Brown moved over one seat,leaned closer, made eye contact and nodded his head. Also, he decided to turn off his cell phone on gamedays. "It's just time and work," he says. "I'm finally at peace."

So was it worth it? The yelling, and the doubts, the injured feelings? Personally, Collins isn't sure. "I don'twant to do it again," Collins says. His nightmare is that Brown will end up hating him. He thinks aboutTracy McGrady, and how he struggled as a rookie in Toronto. Finally, after three years, McGrady leftToronto and went to Orlando, where he finally became . . . Tracy McGrady.

"My biggest concern is, you develop them, and then they go somewhere else," Collins says. "You putthree years into them, and they resent it. And about the time they're ready to be stars, they leave you."

But Kwame Brown's education is far from complete. Everyone agrees this summer will be critical for him.Instead of going to Gainesville to hang out -- he has bought a $400,000 house there and intends toeventually take some classes -- he will have a work-intensive off-season. He'll go to Boston to play for theWizards farm team in an NBA-affiliated summer league for first- and second-year players and aspiringdraft picks looking to hone their games. He will spend some time in Chicago training with Jordan. And hewill attend two clinics, the Pete Newell Big Man Camp for college and pro players who want to work ontheir fundamentals at the center and forward positions, and an agility and footwork clinic in Phoenix.

He has also promised that he will be more responsible this off-season than last. "It will be very

interesting," Collins says.

The summer will be shaping for him from a personal standpoint as well, according to his businessmanager. "The most important part of his education has not happened yet," Lopez says. It will happen inthe off-season. "That's where he will become the man he'll become."

He needs, for instance, to get his family's financial affairs more organized. He has placed his family on anallowance, and while he wants to help them, he is leery of creating dependents. "I've told them I'm willingto help them in any way, if they're willing to help themselves," he says. He continues to be dismayed bythe effect his wealth has had on some of his old friends and relatives. "It's the people close to you who areaffected by it the most, and that hurts you the most," he says. "They just automatically assume you're

some kind of vending machine full of money that never runs dry and you're supposed to do things forthem. And you can't do that for everybody, because you'd be broke."

For example, there is his father. Recently, Brown got a letter from him. He was proud to see what his sonhad done, his father wrote, and he had found faith. Brown had mixed feelings as he read. "He sounded likesome kind of Muslim priest," he says. Then he got to the part where his father accused his mother ofstealing the children.

"I guess he thinks I don't remember what happened," Brown says. "But I do." And then came theinevitable paragraph. "Of course," Brown says, "there's that part where he says, I don't need anything from

you, but could you send money?"

Brown waved the letter at Lopez. "Can you believe this guy?"


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There is one person Brown takes great pleasure spending money on, and that's his mother. He purchased anew home for her, a sprawling white stucco affair in Oak Grove Island, a gated community just outsideBrunswick. He also arranged to help her furnish it. They bicker over the details.

"You should listen to me," he says. "You need me to tell you what to do."

"Boy, I didn't come out of you," she says. "You came out of me."

Joyce shows off the new house as if it were a museum. She marvels at the endless closets. The master bathis her pride. "Look at this shower," she says. "Big as a locker room." She calls it "my peace house. I comehere for peace."

But the house remains sparsely furnished. To Brown's astonishment, the old house is where Joyce stillspends most days. Oak Grove Island is clean and beautiful, with emerald grass and spewing fountains, andthe obligatory golf course, and joggers. But all of her friends are in the old neighborhood, and she doesn'twant to move her youngest, Akeem, from his school. Brown can't get her to sell the old place. "I don'tknow how I can get her away from that house," he laments.

It's a small problem, compared with the old ones. At least, Brown says, the family is no longer desperate.It is on this point that any lecturing do-gooders who think Brown should be in college must yield. It isinevitable: Boys will offer themselves up to the pros too soon, and men will draft them, for better orworse. Brown says he has no regrets. "College is supposed to prepare you for a job," he says. "That's whyyou go to college."

He's already got the job. Now he just has to succeed at it.

"I can do it," he says. "I was born alone. So I'll be all right."

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