The phone calls came out of nowhere at any time day or night. Such as …
“Hello,” I said.
“Is this Ronaldo Higginbotham, the … greatest journalist ever produced by Lakeside Oaks basketball camp?”
“Dale Brown, what are you doing?,” I replied, with a laugh.
And with that, our conversations were off and running, mixed with his basketball trivia questions and agreeing about the NCAA folding its hands while NIL and the transfer portal went unchecked.
Brown, a relatively unknown Washington State assistant who built LSU into a national force in his 25 years from 1972 to 1997 as the Tigers’ head basketball coach, died Friday at age 90.
Suffice to say, there will never be a college coach and maybe human being like him ever again.
It wasn’t just his four league championships and two Final Four teams. Or that he coached some of the most unforgettable players in history, such as Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer Shaquille O’ Neal and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. Or his 448 wins, second in SEC history only to the Baron, Kentucky’s Adolph Rupp.
Brown was raised as a child of a single mother in Minot N.D. He watched his mother become intimidated by bill collectors. He swore he would never cower or back away from a fight.
He was a champion of underdogs on the court and in life, whether it was protecting his players or raising hell with the NCAA, which he often called “gestapo bastards.”
Brown often led with his chin, his mouth and his heart.
At one SEC Tournament, he rushed on the court with a clenched fist when Tennessee’s Carlus Groves yanked O’Neal to the floor. In his second season, Brown ran the length of the court to tackle a Vanderbilt fan who jumped over the press table and got in a brawl with players from both teams.
He made a beeline for the Vandy fan, who was trying to escape back over the press table. Just as a security guard grabbed him, so did Brown.
“He was wearing a suit and I ripped off his vest,” Brown said of the fan. “I remember his buttons popping off and flying all over the place.
“LSU had this old university cop who always wore his hat a little crooked and who worked that corner of the court. Police handcuffed the Vandy fan, then the old campus cop starts to handcuff me.
“I tell him, ‘I’m the damned coach.’ He says, ‘Oh, OK, OK’.”
When Brown took over at LSU, his name was recommended to then-LSU athletic director Carl Maddox by former Tiger’ basketball star Joe Dean.
“I never coached for any legend,” Brown said. “I went to a small school (Minot N.D. State Teachers College). I had no connections, and I wasn’t a part of ‘the group’ so to speak.
“Had Carl Maddox not been a high school coach at one time, I probably would have never gotten this (LSU) job.
“Because whom was I going to have to call to recommend me to Carl Maddox? The janitor at Bishop Ryan (in Minot where Brown coached from 1959-64)? Or the superintendent of the junior high (Garfield) where I coached in Berkeley?”
Previously fired Tigers’ coach Press Maravich did not leave behind any recruiting lists or LSU game tape in order for Brown to judge his returning talent.
During Brown’s first two seasons with the Tigers, he couldn’t even get a black recruit to commit to an official visit. He had to be a coach and a promoter, trying to build a hoops program in a football-dominated culture.
LSU went 14-12 overall and 9-9 in the SEC in 1972-73, Brown’s first season. He convinced a bunch of underdogs the only way they could compete was to play with relentless effort.
Brown nicknamed his first group of Tigers “The Hustlers” and promoted them using an old Wild West-style wanted poster featuring the team picture.
“I’ve had Final Four teams, SEC championship teams, NCAA Tournament teams,” Brown said. “But that first team probably gave me everything it had more than just about any team I coached.”
His best coaching job was in his 14th season when LSU’s 1985-86 team became the first double-digit seed in NCAA Tournament history to reach the Final Four after the Tigers beat Kentucky 59-57 to win the Southeast Regional.
He exhausted just about every strategy possible to overcome the loss of three centers and a chicken pox outbreak.
He moved a 6-7 backup swingman (Ricky Blanton) to starting center and tapped into employing a defense (a combination zone and man-to-man nicknamed The Freak) he had tinkered with as a high school coach in Minot.
When former LSU swingman Don Redden was once asked about The Freak he said, “All I know if a shooter has the ball near me, I’m guarding him.”
Admittedly, Brown wasn’t an Xs and O’s technician. But he was a master motivator, honed from hours of reading.
He might use “The Art of War.”
Sun Tzu’s philosophies, such as “When the enemy has to prepare everywhere he won’t be ready anywhere,” struck a chord with Brown.
Or when he tried not to sleep for four days at the SEC Tournament when his team had to play every day.
“Fatigue is a state of mind,” said Brown, who visited the media hotel at 4 a.m. and rousted the LSU writers and broadcasters out of bed to come to the lobby for a kibitzing session.
LSU lost in the finals to Alabama. Crimson Tide head coach Wimp Sanderson said, “I knew we had the game won when I looked at the LSU bench and Dale was asleep.”
Brown considered former UCLA head coach John Wooden as a mentor. It was fitting on Wednesday that Brown was named winner of the 2027 Los Angeles Athletic Club John R. Wooden Legends of Coaching Award. O’Neal presented the news to his former coach via a special video message telling Brown he had been selected for the honor.
Now, we’ll never get to hear his acceptance speech next spring. But I have feeling it would include something he told me several years ago:
“The thing I can say is America is still the land of opportunity. Coming from my humble background, starting out coaching at a tiny school (Columbus N.D. High) on the Montana/Canadian border in a town of 700 people where I didn’t know anybody and was the head basketball, wrestling and track coach, I’m very grateful I never had to sell my soul.”
Contact Ron at ronhigginsmedia@gmail.com