Coach Brown happy with return to the sport he loves

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A familiar face is back on the sidelines at Narraguagus boys basketball games this winter. Local basketball coaching veteran Ron Brown has taken over the reins of the Knights in Harrington.

Brown’s coaching time has been limited in recent years after suffering kidney failure in 1983. Since that time Brown has undergone one kidney transplant and is currently on the waiting list for a living donor transplant.

Brown said he spends a large portion of his time each year, in three four-hour segments each week, undergoing renal dialysis.

“I spend 700 hours a year in a hospital watching blood flow in and out of me… I’m preparing for a living donor transplant. It’s quite an arduous process. I was going stir crazy waiting. So, I threw my name in down there and they’ve been great to me,” said Brown, whose Knights played their second game Tuesday night.

Brown’s wife of 18 years, Shelly, has been through all of it with her husband. The treatments, the scares and the sidelines. She said her husband is back where he belongs.

“I’m glad he is [coaching]. It’s something he loves to do and he’s lost without it. He likes being around the kids. He needs to be around them,” Shelly Brown said.

The 52-year-old Brown began coaching basketball in 1969 at the Bangor YMCA. He ran the church league and coached his Columbia Street Baptist team.

“I really got the bug. I moved to Indiana and coached a couple of years of freshman ball out there,” Brown said.

He returned to Maine and became an English teacher and basketball coach at Penquis Valley in Milo. It was while coaching there that he received a phone call that started him on a road that almost took him to the National Basketball Association as an assistant coach.

In 1979, the Maine Lumberjacks of the Continental Basketball Association played home games at the Bangor Auditorium. The Lumberjacks fired their coach and Ron Brown said his phone rang.

“They asked me to come down and coach one game.”

After clearing it with school administrators, Brown accepted.

“So, I sat on the bench. I didn’t coach. I was a cheerleader,” Brown said.

Except for one thing. At one point during the game Brown interjected himself during a timeout.

“I told them that I had watched them all play on television and that they were great. But I suggested we isolate [future NBA player] Billy [Ray] Bates and we won the game,” Brown explained.

The Lumberjacks soon called him again. The Lumberjacks won again and then won several more games with Brown directing things.

Brown was finally asked if he would be willing to coach the team’s home games for the remainder of the year. In fact, he coached both the Lumberjacks and Penquis. The Lumberjacks won the CBA’s Eastern Division title.

He had done a good enough job that the team offered him the position on a full-time basis.

“That summer I was out playing golf, the next thing I know the club pro was there in a golf cart. He told me there were some people waiting to see me in the clubhouse,” Brown said.

Brown was offered $25,000 and a bonus to become the Lumberjacks’ head coach. He slept on it and took the job.

After leaving the team after the 1981 season, Brown returned to high school coaching. Additionally, he worked as an NBA scout. Things were going well. He was coaching and checking out talent for the big leagues. He was working with fellow scouts such as George Karl, now the Milwaukee Bucks head coach.

“I was in hoop heaven,” Brown said. “Then I started feeling sick.”

Brown had one more job offer before he suffered renal failure. The NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers offered him an assistant coaching position, $26,000 per year and an automobile.

That was in 1983, the year his kidney failed. Since then, Brown has undergone a kidney transplant and a lifetime of dialysis. He is thankful for the support he has received from doctors, nurses and fellow patients. But most of all he is thankful for the support his wife has given him.

“She’s been lugging me around all these years. If not for her I’d have thrown in the towel a long time ago,” Brown said.

He has also coached when he could. He coached in Machias, at Eastern Maine Technical College in Bangor and Searsport to name a few teams. He has also founded a Web site called Maineroundballmag.com. He has provided analysis for Maine Public Broadcasting’s television coverage of high school basketball tournaments and written sports columns for local publications and his Web site.

But all of that is just window dressing for what he really wants to do and that is coach.

“All the things I’ve done extraneous to basketball has all just been fluff,” Brown said.

He is back to teaching. A believer in a half-court system, he is trying to adjust to the idea that his team may be the quickest he has ever coached.

“It’s forced an old fogey like me to pull out the run and jump press… A stuffy coach will only adapt players to his system. Ideally it should be the other way around,” Brown said.

So, like he has done since 1983, Ron Brown is adapting. And he is learning. He has his kids doing things they’ve never done before and he likes it when he sees the light go on for a player. He talked excitedly about a player scoring on a back-door cut and how excited the player was because he understood the concept and what created the basket.

“We’re so quick, if we can get people to play us man-to-man we could be tough to defend. The hardest thing is to get the kids to do both – to walk and to run,” Brown said.

No matter how the season goes for the Knights it is a win-win for Brown. Despite the difficulties of daily life, he can still do what he loves to do most.

“I’m lucky. Here I am in my car on my way to coach a basketball game. For 2 1/2 hours tonight I’ll have the best motivation outside of my family that I can have,” he said.

McAuley nets regional ranking

The McAuley girls basketball team hasn’t yet stepped onto the court to defend last winter’s Class A basketball state champion, but a ranking by USA Today has the Lions listed as one of the top teams in the east.

McAuley of Portland was ranked ninth after a 23-0 season last year. The Lions graduated two of their top starters but return Gatorade Player of the Year Sarah Marshall, who is headed to Boston College next year.

Christ the King of Middle Village, N.Y., was the top-ranked squad.

Don Perryman can be reached at 990-8045, 1-800-310-8600 or dperryman@bangordailynews.net