Hubie Brown was a 'guiding force' for Mike Breen and others on NBA broadcasts
Mike Breen and Hubie Brown, left, and Mike Breen before an NBA game in Memphis in 2022. Credit: ESPN Images/Sam Jordan
Mike Breen was preparing to call his first NBA Finals for ABC in 2006 and already was “petrified” by the assignment.
Then an ESPN executive told him he had to simplify his presentation to reflect the fact that more casual fans than usual would be watching in the championship round.
“It kind of screwed with my head a little bit,” Breen told Newsday. “I was nervous enough just doing the Finals, but now I have to adjust the way I call a game.”
After an awkward first few minutes during which Breen found himself explaining the basics as if it were Basketball 101, analyst Hubie Brown intervened.
“I think it was the first timeout, he reaches over, he grabs my arm firmly, he looks into my eyes and says, ‘Kid, just call the game the way you always did, and we’re going to be great,’ ” Breen recalled.
“It just completely put me at ease, and I just called the game like we had done all year. That’s what he did. I’ll speak for myself, but I know that others feel the same way: He was like a father to us, our NBA father.
“He taught you. He supported you. He encouraged you. He was just such a guiding force, and every single game you worked with him, you just learned so much. And the dinners the night before, you learned twice as much.”
Class will be in session one last time for Breen and ABC viewers on Sunday when Brown, 91, works his final game before retiring as an announcer.
The 76ers will face the Bucks in Milwaukee, where Brown started his NBA career as an assistant coach in 1972, working with the likes of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Robertson and Bobby Dandridge.
Breen has tried to prepare the always-business Brown for what is to come.
“We talked earlier this week,” Breen said, “and I prefaced it by saying, ‘Listen, I know you’re not going to like this, but you’re just going to have to let people let you know how much they love you.
“I think he’s ready for it. He understands. The amount of respect and admiration and love he has from everybody that’s worked with him is off the charts. But I also promised he was going to be allowed to analyze the game and inform viewers.”
That is all Brown ever wanted as a shtick-free master of the game’s intricacies, on the court and at the microphone.
“There’s a lot more for this game than me just saying goodbye,” Brown told The Athletic, citing an intriguing matchup between big-name, underachieving teams.
Brown coached high school, college and pro teams — including ABA champion Kentucky in 1975 and the Knicks for parts of five seasons in the mid-1980s.
But younger fans know him mostly for his TV work, first at USA Network, CBS and TNT and since 2004 at ESPN/ABC.
“Nobody breaks down the finer points of basketball better than Hubie Brown,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a news release. “He is the ultimate teacher of the game and an iconic figure to generations of NBA fans. We congratulate Hubie on one of the most extraordinary careers in the history of the league.”
That 2006 Finals between the Mavericks and Heat was his last with the No. 1 announcing team, but he has continued to work games and mentor Breen and others since.
Brown told SiriusXM of his retirement, “It’s time.” He said he still does what he always has done to stay active, waking up and writing a list of things to be done that day.
But the past few years have been difficult personally. Claire, his wife of 63 years, died last June. One of his three daughters, Julie, died in 2019 and his only son, Brendan, a former Knicks radio analyst, died of a heart attack in November at 54.
“Grieving makes you grow up,” Brown told SiriusXM.
He said of his late wife, “Every day I appreciate her more, because I never could have gotten where I got without her.”
Regarding his career, he told The Athletic, “When I look back, it’s been the fastest 50 years of being in the NBA as a coach and as a television person.
“On Sunday I want to be at the top of my game. You want to be able to do justice to the game itself.”
Breen said of Brown, “He’s devoted his whole life to the game, and he’s meant so much to the game, I think as much as any player, as much as any coach.
“I firmly believe no one has taught the game of basketball to more people than Hubie, and that’s from his coaching days to his broadcasting days, and also all the clinics that he used to do traveling around the world.”
ESPN’s Mike Greenberg agreed.
“There has never been an analyst who taught you more about the game, any game, than Hubie Brown has every time he’s put on a headset,” Greenberg said in a news release. “The very best to do it, his impact will last forever.”
What Brown lacks in pizzazz, he makes up for in content.
“The entertainment is from listening to him on how much love he has for the game,” Breen said. “If something’s going right, you can hear the joy in his voice . . . When something doesn’t go right, you can almost hear the anger in his voice.”
After that TV timeout pep talk in his first Finals game, Breen settled in nicely. This June he will work his record 20th NBA Finals.
“It’s not hyperbole or over-exaggeration,” he said. “Working with Hubie and becoming such close friends with him is one of the blessings of my life, and I know there are many others that feel the same way.”
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
