Hubie Brown had just taken his first college coaching job in 1968 and didn't expect that he'd also be asked to teach.
So, for his one year as an assistant at William & Mary, he taught two elective basketball courses.
Brown, now 91 and set to work his final game as a broadcaster, never stopped teaching the sport in more than 55 years since. Only his audience grew from college students to players, coaches and TV viewers all over the world.
“It’s the most remarkable thing and it’s not hyperbole: He has probably taught more people about the game of basketball than anybody that’s ever lived,” broadcasting partner Mike Breen said.
Brown and Breen will work ABC's telecast of Sunday's game between Philadelphia and Milwaukee, where Brown got his first NBA opportunity as an assistant coach with the Bucks teams featuring Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson in 1972.
For the next five decades, he'd move from the coach's box to the TV table and back, earning induction in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2005 for his contributions to basketball.
Brown has called 18 NBA Finals between TV and radio during his 35 years as a national TV and radio analyst. Yet he says he'll be nervous Sunday as he was doing every game, despite his extraordinary preparation that included watching both teams play at least twice in the week beforehand.
“You’re always nervous,” Brown said. “That’s me. I don’t worry about anybody else. Because you want to be able to paint the picture, you want to be able to educate the fan to another level of expertise, and you realize it’s a team doing it, not yourself.”
The team, for Brown, is his partner along with the director and producer. The time they spend together preparing, becoming like family, reminds him of coaching.
Not surprisingly, his players recognize aspects of his coaching in his broadcasting.
“I used to love listening to him, because he was quite different than any other broadcaster that was on the air,” said Hall of Famer Bernard King, who led the NBA in scoring while playing for Brown with the New York Knicks in 1984-85.
“And I think that the fans that love basketball, the intricacies of the game, he would help the viewer understand exactly what happened and why it happened. And so the viewers are being educated as they watch the game, not just being entertained, and that was a high mark of what he did as a broadcaster.”
Those who listened through the years recognized some of Brown's trademarks, such as calling the lane “the painted area," and offering strategy tips for a team by saying “you must.”
“My favorite is when he was really happy about a play, like he’d always say: ‘That’s it! That’s it! That’s it!’” Breen said. “And then when he got mad, you could tell when he got mad, when you weren’t playing the game right, just in the tone in his voice.”
Brown was so detailed in his own coaching that King said the Knicks even had a specific play for when an opponent missed a free throw, called power right, in which the forward would sprint down the left side, cut across the lane and post up on the right block.
So when Brown was impressed with what other coaches ran, he wanted to highlight it.
“That’s always a tribute to the coaching staff for preparing their teams, and you never want to not be able to emphasize that to the fans when you see it,” he said.
Brown had no experience and no plans for TV when he was first approached to do work for USA Network in 1981. He would return to coaching the next year with the Knicks, and then it was back to broadcasting from the time he left in the 1986-87 season until returning to coaching in 2002 with Memphis, where he would win his second NBA Coach of the Year award.
Even when Brown finished there, he wasn't done being a coach. Breen was calling the NBA Finals on ABC for the first time in 2006 and was nervous, trying too hard to follow instructions to tailor his vocabulary toward first-time viewers the event would draw.
At the first timeout, while Miami and Dallas were getting their instructions, Brown gave some of his own.
“He grabbed me by the arm — and grabbed it tight — and he looked me in the eye and he says, ‘Just call the game the way you always call it and we’ll be fine,’” Breen said. “And it just relaxed me.”
On Sunday, it will be Breen's turn to help Brown through after a difficult last year in which both his wife and son died.
“He’s not interested in people showering him with love and tributes,” Breen said. “But the goal is to let him analyze the game like he always does, teach the game to the viewers, but at the same time pay him the tribute that he deserves, because he’s given his life to the game.”
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA
FILE - Hubie Brown makes his debut as ESPN commentator before NBA basketball game action as the Toronto Raptors face the Boston Celtics in Toronto, Oct. 19, 2018. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP, File)
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Federal officers dropped tear gas and sprayed eye irritant at activists Tuesday during another day of confrontations in Minneapolis, while students miles away walked out of a suburban school to protest the Trump administration's bold immigration sweeps.
Meanwhile, the fallout from the fatal shooting of a Minneapolis woman by an immigration agent reached the local U.S. Attorney's Office: At least five prosecutors have resigned amid controversy over how the U.S. Justice Department is handling the investigation, according to people familiar with the matter.
Separately, a Justice Department official said Wednesday there's no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation. An FBI probe of Renee Good's death is ongoing.
Strife between federal agents and the public continues to boil, six days since Good was shot in the head while driving off in her Honda Pilot. At one scene, gas clouds filled a Minneapolis street near where she died. A man scrubbed his eyes with snow and screamed for help after agents in a Jeep sprayed an orange irritant and drove off.
It’s common for people to boo, taunt and blow orange whistles when they spot heavily armed immigration agents passing through in unmarked vehicles or walking the streets, all part of a grassroots effort to warn the neighborhood and remind the government that they’re watching.
“Who doesn't have a whistle?” a man with a bag of them yelled.
Brita Anderson, who lives nearby and came to support neighborhood friends, said she was “incensed” to see agents in tactical gear and gas masks, and wondered about their purpose.
“It felt like the only reason they’d come here is to harass people,” Anderson said.
In Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, students protesting the immigration enforcement operation walked out of school, as students in other communities have done this week.
The departures in the U.S. Attorney's Office include First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson, who had been leading the sprawling prosecution of public fraud schemes in the state, according to people who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.
With the Department of Homeland Security pledging to send more than 2,000 immigration officers into Minnesota, the state, joined by Minneapolis and St. Paul, sued President Donald Trump’s administration Monday to halt or limit the surge.
The lawsuit says Homeland Security is violating the First Amendment and other constitutional protections by focusing on a progressive state that favors Democrats and welcomes immigrants.
“What we are seeing is thousands — plural — thousands of federal agents coming into our city. And, yeah, they’re having a tremendous impact on day-to-day life,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said.
A judge set a status conference for Wednesday.
Homeland Security says it has made more than 2,000 arrests in the state since early December and is vowing to not back down. Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, responding to the lawsuit, accused Minnesota officials of ignoring public safety.
In a different lawsuit, a judge said she would rule by Thursday or Friday on a request to restrict the use of force, such as chemical irritants, on people who are observing and recording agents' activities. Government attorneys argued that officers must protect themselves.
The Trump administration has repeatedly defended the immigration agent who shot Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, saying he acted in self-defense. But that explanation has been widely panned by Frey, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and others based on videos of the confrontation.
State and local authorities are urging the public to share video and any other evidence as they seek to separately investigate Good's death after federal authorities insisted they would approach it alone and not share information.
In Wisconsin, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez is proposing that the state ban civil immigration enforcement around courthouses, hospitals, health clinics, schools, churches and other places. She is hoping to succeed Gov. Tony Evers, a fellow Democrat, who is not running for a third term.
“We can take a look at that, but I think banning things absolutely will ramp up the actions of our folks in Washington, D.C.,” Evers said, referring to the Trump administration. “They don’t tend to approach those things appropriately.”
Associated Press reporters Ed White in Detroit; Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis; and Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed.
Monica Travis shares an embrace while visiting a makeshift memorial for Renee Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer last week, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)
A protester is detained by Federal agents near the scene where Renee Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer last week, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Minneapolis.(AP Photo/Adam Gray)
A protester grabs a tear gas grenade deployed by federal immigration officers near the scene where Renee Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer last week, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)
A protester is sprayed with pepper spray by a Federal agent Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Minneapolis.(AP Photo/Adam Gray)
Tear gas is deployed amid protesters near the scene where Renee Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer last week, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Minneapolis.(AP Photo/Adam Gray)
EDS NOTE: OBSCENITY - Tear gas is deployed amid protesters near the scene where Renee Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer last week, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)
A protester is detained by Federal agents near the scene where Renee Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer last week, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Minneapolis.(AP Photo/Adam Gray)(AP Photo/Adam Gray)
A protester grabs a tear gas grenade deployed by federal immigration officers near the scene where Renee Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer last week, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Fireworks are set off by protesters outside the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Jen Golbeck)
Federal immigration officers detain a demonstrator outside Bishop Whipple Federal Building after tear gas was deployed Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Jen Golbeck)
Federal immigration officers are seen outside Bishop Whipple Federal Building after tear gas was deployed Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Jen Golbeck)
Federal agents drive through smoke from tear gas dispersed during a protest, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026 in Minneapolis (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
A protester's face is doused in water after he was pepper sprayed outside of the Bishop Whipple Federal Building, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Jen Golbeck)
EDS NOTE: OBSCENITY - A man gestures as he walks toward a cloud of tear gas that was deployed by federal immigration officers Monday, Jan. 12, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Protesters try to avoid tear gas dispersed by federal agents, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026 in Minneapolis (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
Federal agents get ready to disperse tear gas into a crowd at a protest, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026 in Minneapolis (AP Photo/Adam Gray)
