Written By: Michael D. McClellan |
It’s the same everywhere he goes. Not a day passes that Dee Brown isn’t asked about The Dunk, a spontaneous act of showmanship that makes him famous, draws Michael Jordan’s ire, and brings urban sneaker culture one step closer to the mainstream. Mistaken for Shawn Kemp’s little brother during the 1991 NBA Slam Dunk Contest, Brown, an unknown rookie out of Jacksonville, becomes a household name when he takes down Seattle’s “Reign Man” with a jam so original that it ushers in the contest’s prop era, replete with dunkers soaring over cars, teammates, and mascots. Sure, Brown only uses his arm, but when you close your eyes and dab in midair . . .
Pump the brakes: Dab? In midair?
The dunk contest, which begins in 1984, is still something of a novelty when Brown signs on as a late add. He’s 6-foot-1, rail-thin, practically a runt standing next to the muscular, 6-foot-10 Kemp. There are others in the contest—leapers like Blue Edwards, Kenny Smith, Kendall Gill, Otis Smith, Rex Chapman, and Kenny Williams—but the SuperSonics’ precocious man-child is the odds-on favorite. Kemp can leap like The Human Highlight Film and destroy the rim like Chocolate Thunder. Brown? He barely fills out his uniform.
Julius Erving is one of the judges on this night. A student of the game, Brown has Erving’s dossier memorized. He knows all about Rucker Park, the Virginia Squires, and the New Jersey Nets. He knows about that sick reverse layup against the Lakers in the 1980 NBA Finals, a scoop shot for the ages. He also understands that while Doc isn’t the first player to levitate, he’s the first to transform dunking into an art form. Erving is Jackson Pollock, the ball his brush, the court his canvas.
“A lot of guys can dunk. Very few leave their mark,” Brown says.
On this night all those years ago, Dee Brown decides to leave his mark.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Dee Brown’s story is bigger than the night he delivers that jam for the ages. The dunk makes him a star, but there’s more to the Dee Brown mosaic than a singular night in Charlotte midway through his rookie season. That doesn’t keep the haters from dissing Brown’s 12-year career—he doesn’t win a championship, his basketball résumé never fulfills the glitz promised by that dunk contest—but the critics who throw shade fail to grasp the NBA landscape onto which he lands. Everything starts to unravel in Boston when Auerbach’s maneuvering for Len Bias backfires and compounds a year later when the Celtics select Northeastern’s Reggie Lewis, two future cornerstones wiped out in tragic fashion. The C’s still have stars on the roster when Brown arrives via the nineteenth pick in the 1990 NBA Draft, but age and injury limit the effectiveness of all-time players Bird, McHale, and Parish. Brown can’t possibly fill their shoes.
“People forget what it was like back then,” Brown says. “Those teams in the ’90s struggled to recover from the deaths of Len Bias and Reggie Lewis. The Big Three were breaking down. The team was in decline.”
Welcome to the post-apocalyptic world that is Boston Celtics basketball through much of the ’90s—dark days fueled by tragedy, exacerbated by miserable ownership, and prolonged by a string of forgettable draft busts. Drop Dee Brown into a different era—when the Big Three were going gangbusters—and the Celtics might have another banner hanging from the rafters. That’s not meant to diminish Brown’s legacy in Boston. He epitomizes Celtic Pride during his time with the team, joining a list of uber-legends as team captain. He plays alongside the Big Three, and he’s on the floor during the last game in the Boston Garden. He represents the organization with class while bridging the chasm between Bird and Pierce. Get to know Brown for more than a dunk contest, and it’s easy to see why his light shines brightest during the team’s darkest days.
Jacksonville is hardly a basketball hotbed, but Jax is where this NBA-bound story starts. Brown grows up there auspiciously, which is to say that his isn’t a discourse on hood life.
“I was the oldest of three kids,” Brown begins. “My parents were young when they had me—my mom was 16 and my dad was 17—and they’re still together today. We weren’t from the ghetto, we weren’t hood. Both of my parents worked. I always had a roof over my head, and there was plenty of food to eat, so it wasn’t that story.”
The Browns are a sports family. His dad is a basketball junkie, a rec league baller with instincts he passes down to his son. Dee’s uncles aren’t much older than he is, so it’s like having a pack of big brothers around. They’re always at the park, where Dee learns to pitch, pass, and shoot. Soon he’s playing organized sports year-round.
“Being from Florida, I played whatever sport was in season. I was really good at baseball and football, but basketball was something that I loved.”
Brown doesn’t hone his game on a Jacksonville equivalent to Rucker Park, and those looking to perpetuate the gangsta stereotype are sorely disappointed. He attends the Bolles School, a private college preparatory school with an international reputation for both academic and athletic excellence. More than 50 Olympic swimmers graduate from Bolles. Chipper Jones, the ’99 Major League Baseball MVP, is a freshman when Brown is a senior. Jackie Crosby and Kevin Sack, both Pulitzer Prize winners in journalism, are Bolles alums. Brown is the only African American in his graduating class.
“I got the chance to be around a lot of affluent people that weren’t my color,” he says. “It helped me to see things in a completely different light.”
For Brown, basketball isn’t his only passion.
“Break dancing was big during the ’80s, and I was a breaker,” Brown confesses with a laugh. “I had a cardboard box in my garage, and I had that big boom box with dual cassette decks. I remember taking it to the park and blasting the music as loud as we could, and those batteries would be dead within an hour.
“Back then, hip-hop was just starting. My high school years were 1983 through 1986. I was listening to the Sugar Hill Gang, Kurtis Blow, and LL Cool J. For me, that whole period was really about the New York rappers because there really weren’t any Florida rappers or hip-hop artists. Heavy D & The Boyz had that album Big Tyme. I wore it out.
“We had a group, and we would go to these dance competitions at the local skating rink. We would play basketball all day and break dance at night. I’d listen to the New York rappers and various deejays like DJ Kid Capri. From there I started listening to acts like Public Enemy, Eric B. and Rakim, and Heavy D. Today they are considered old school, but to true fans like me, they are better known as the Godfathers of Rap.”
What the Bolles Experience doesn’t do is give Brown street cred with college recruiters.
“Not a single Division I college was interested in me,” Brown says. “Zero. I was 30th in my graduating class, I had a 3.7 GPA, and I scored 1200 on the SAT, so it wasn’t an academic thing. Florida is a football state, and there weren’t a lot of big-time basketball players coming out of Jacksonville. Bolles was a small, private school with an AA classification, and it was basically all-white, so even though I was one of the best players in the state, I wasn’t on anyone’s radar when Florida basketball prospects were discussed. I only had one scholarship offer coming out of high school. That was an NAIA school, Presbyterian College, in North Carolina.”
Brown decides on a local junior college instead. His plan is simple: Prove that he can play and hope that a D-I school offers him a scholarship. All of that changes late in the summer of ’86.
“Florida holds an annual Olympic-style festival called the Sunshine State Games,” Brown explains. “Other states do something similar—in New York, it’s called the Empire State Games. There are all kinds of events: track and field, swimming, boxing, basketball, and so forth. I went to Lakeland with my high school team and competed against all the top players, including Florida’s Mr. Basketball. I averaged 37 points-per-game and broke the scoring record.
“The Thursday before the tournament, I had one offer from an NAIA school. The following Monday, I had 15 Division I scholarship offers. Every major college in the South wanted me because I was still eligible to sign. School was starting in one week, so I had to make a snap decision. Since I was already mentally prepared to stay home and go to school, I signed with Jacksonville University.”
The Dolphins are D-I but barely a blip on the national hoops scene. The school’s most famous baller is Artis Gilmore, a Consensus First-Team All-American in 1971 and a Hall of Famer. Otis Smith (the same Otis Smith in that 1990 dunk contest) is a senior when Brown is a freshman. From 1987–90, Brown carves out his own legacy. He scores 1,503 points, sets the school’s single-season steals record, and leaves with zero regrets.
“Jacksonville was right for me,” he says. “It was a small school in the Sun Belt Conference, which had competitive programs like Virginia Commonwealth, South Alabama, and UNC Charlotte. And our non-conference schedule was tough—we played schools like Virginia and North Carolina, so I had experience going against some of the best competition in the country.”
Brown proves that he can ball with the best, but, in the pre-Internet world in which he lives, word is slow to spread. With the 1990 NBA Draft looming, Brown’s draft status is anything but a slam dunk.
“The draft was reduced to two rounds the year before I came out,” Brown says. “I had a great senior season, but I wasn’t an All-American so there was no guarantee that I’d get drafted. It was just like high school all over again—the Sun Belt Conference was inferior to the ACC, I hadn’t proved myself consistently against blue-chip schools, the NBA was too physical for me, and on and on.”
Determined to change minds, Dee Brown hits the road.
“There were all of these different camps during the summer,” he says. “My first camp was the Orlando Invitational. All of the top players played, except for guys like Derrick Coleman, Gary Payton, Dennis Scott, and Chris Jackson, who were already locked into the top five spots. I made the all-tournament team and showed what I could do against guys like Bimbo Coles and Travis Mays. That’s when I started moving up in the draft. I went from maybe being selected in the second round, to being a solid second round pick, or maybe even being picked early in the second round.
“The next camp was in Chicago. I played well there and impressed teams during the interview process, and all of a sudden there was talk about me being a high first-round pick. Those camps helped teams see me in a different light.”
The rest of the summer is a blur. Brown, no longer a fringe player, now has multiple suitors wanting closer looks.
“I visited three teams ahead of the draft,” Brown says. “I went to Detroit—they were still champions at that time—and I also visited Houston and Boston. Back then, there weren’t any rules. You could stay with a team for days on end. I went to Houston for a week and played pick-up ball with the veterans. That was how the coaching staff ran their pre-draft workout—no drills, no analytics, no scientific evaluation. Just go play. If the players like you, we like you. It was the same thing in Detroit. Boston was different. When I visited the Celtics, I had a very short workout. I figured they weren’t impressed with me.”
More memorable for Brown is what happens off the court.
“I had an interview with Red, in his office on Causeway Street. I was a basketball history buff anyway, so walking into his office was better than walking into the Hall of Fame. There was so much history on the walls, on his desk, everywhere you looked. I sat there, awestruck, unable to believe that I was having a face-to-face conversation with Red Auerbach. It was surreal. Me being a 20-year-old kid from Jacksonville, who’d never left home before, and suddenly I’m in Boston and talking to the man who’d started it all. I knew the history of the team; I’d watched so many Celtics games on CBS when Tommy Heinsohn was broadcasting. I’d been glued to the TV during all of those ’80s battles between the Lakers and the Celtics. To be in Red’s office was a life-changing experience. Even if I didn’t get drafted by Boston, I knew that I’d talked to one of the greatest basketball minds of all time.”
Brown’s dream comes true on June 27, 1990, when the Celtics select the athletic combo guard with the 19th pick in the first round.
“The best thing about being drafted by the Celtics is that Red Auerbach made the pick. People talk about the dunk contest, but the draft was the best moment of my life. Just to think about all of the other players he’s selected in the past—Russell, Havlicek, Cowens, Bird . . . for me to be put in that company is unbelievable. You couldn’t ask for a better feeling.”
Dee Brown plays nearly eight seasons in a Celtics uniform. The best days come early. The team sprints out to a 29–5 record to start the 1990–91 regular season, finishes 56–26, and falls to the hated Pistons in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. He lands on the ’91 NBA All-Rookie First Team.
“The Big Three were older when I got drafted, and the Celtics had started transitioning from a front court-oriented team to a team that featured the backcourt,” Brown says. “The offense featured younger, faster players like Brian Shaw, Reggie Lewis, Kevin Gamble, and myself. For the first time in a long time—or maybe ever—the Celtics were throwing down alley-oop dunks, running backdoor cuts, dunking on people, and doing windmill dunks during the game. The fans didn’t know what to think. They called us the ‘Zip Boys.’ Tommie Heinsohn gave us that nickname.”
Despite the injection of youth, the Boston Celtics are slowly crumbling when Dee Brown arrives, the fissures almost imperceptible at first.
“When I got there, Larry, Kevin, and Chief were still playing at a high level. This was before Larry got hurt, before Kevin got hurt again, and before Reggie passed. So even though we lost Lenny, we had an opportunity to be a great team. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be.
“My first eight years in the league, there were only two NBA champions: Chicago and Houston. That was it. Like most players of that era, I came around at the wrong time because my career coincided with Jordan’s prime. But then again, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone, Charles Barkley, and so many other great players could say the same thing. They just came around when the greatest player who ever lived happened to be playing basketball.”
Brown’s early years in Boston are spent balling in the game’s most storied venue.
“People talk about Chicago Stadium and Madison Square Garden, but the old Boston Garden was great,” Brown says, smiling. “It was all about one thing: Basketball without distractions. There were no cheerleaders. No dancers. You had the organ. You had the dead spots. You had the obstructed view seats. You had the conspiracy theories of Red turning off the hot water to the showers or turning off the air conditioning during the playoffs. It was pure basketball, played in front of the best fans in the world.”
A young Dee Brown loves talking shop with the Celtics’ aging patriarch. Auerbach takes an instant liking to the acrobatic dunker with the old school vibe and Pogo sticks for legs. The memories made are priceless.
“We were playing a home game, and I’m sitting in the locker room when Red walks in,” Brown says. “I think it was the year that Reggie Lewis had passed away, and I was playing close to 38 minutes a game. By this point in the season, I’m exhausted because I’m playing both guard positions. One game I’m guarding Mitch Richmond, the next game it’s Michael Jordan, and the next it’s Tim Hardaway. I’m guarding these guys, and I’m giving up 20 to 30 pounds. They’re bigger and stronger.
“So I’m sitting in the locker room and Red walks in. I never called him ‘Red.’ I always called him ‘Arnold.’ He loved it. I said, ‘Arnold, I’m exhausted, sore, and beat up.’ He looks at me and says, ‘Dee, let me tell you something. One year Bill Russell averaged 47 minutes per game for an entire season. And guess what? He owes me a minute. So you’d better never complain about playing all of these minutes because he played 47 and he owes me a minute, and until I get it from him, I’m going to keep chasing him.’”
Brown laughs at the retelling.
“I never complained about minutes again,” Brown says. “For him to be pissed off because Bill Russell didn’t play 48 minutes a game, the greatest Celtic of them all, who am I to complain [laughs]? Besides, playing 38 minutes a night was a lot better than sitting the bench. I loved Red. He always came into the locker room with a story.”
Away from the court, Brown soaks up Boston’s nightlife. His musical tastes continue to grow and evolve, but he’s still hooked on hip-hop.
“It was the early ’90s, so Biggie had just hit big. I listened to Busta Rhymes and EPMD, so I still liked the New York rap scene. There were a couple of Florida groups coming out of that time, like 2 Live Crew. People were like, ‘You can’t listen to that in Boston.’ But I was from Florida, so I had to represent. 69 Boyz were from Jacksonville. So was 95 South. They had a hit with ‘Whoot, There It Is.’ Living in Boston, I also go to see plenty of concerts. I was a Janet Jackson fan, a Faith Evans fan, a Stacy Lattisaw fan. Whitney Houston. I saw them all in Boston.”
If you’re a Boston Celtics fan during the ’90s, your allegiance to the team is sorely tested. Brown understands this perhaps better than anyone.
“A lot of people tend to dismiss that era of Celtics basketball,” Brown says. “They remember me winning the dunk contest, and then it jumps to Paul Pierce. The best years were early in the decade and were bookmarked by two tragedies that disrupted the future of the franchise. Len and Reggie weren’t lost due to injury. They weren’t traded away for other players. These were great talents who passed away tragically. You can’t plan for that.
“People forget that I joined the team just a few years after Lenny died, and I was part of the whole Reggie situation. I was there for eight years, and the Celtics were still trying to recover when I was traded to Toronto. We had some good players. Dominique Wilkins was there for a couple of years. Xavier McDaniel. Sherman Douglas. Dino Radja. Rick Fox was there before he went to Los Angeles. Chris Ford was one of the best coaches that I ever had.
“Nobody even talks about the ’90s, and nobody really brings up my career in Boston,” Brown continues. “That era has become a footnote in Celtics history. I consider myself lucky. I played in the last game in the old Boston Garden and the first game in the Fleet Center. I was the last person to play with the Big Three. I was the last of Red’s last picks to make significant contributions in a Celtics uniform. Those are the things I back on with pride.”
Brown understands that winning the ’91 NBA Slam Dunk Contest is a sexier headline and the thing people still remember most. But for him, being named Celtics captain is the ultimate honor.
“They don’t give that title out every day, nor do they give it away lightly. You have to earn it. I never thought in my wildest dreams that I’d be a Celtic captain. It helped being around Larry, Kevin, Robert, and DJ on a daily basis. Through them, you learn that Celtic Pride isn’t a catchphrase. It’s a way of life.”
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. Brown, who embraces his new role, quickly appreciates its burden.
“When I first became captain, I don’t think I fully grasped the magnitude,” Brown says. “It was great to be recognized as a leader, but I didn’t realize how difficult it was to be captain. It was a handful. And then, when you look at the list of captains that came before—Cousy, Russell, Havlicek, Cowens, Bird, Parish—you’re talking about some of the greatest players to pick up a basketball. That’s pressure. Just to be mentioned in the same breath with these guys is an honor. I didn’t have a career to match theirs, but I felt like I carried the same respect for what it means to be a Boston Celtic.”
As the team’s fortunes sag through the ’90s, Brown’s career stalls like a hurricane over the Florida coast. He battles a knee injury, watches legends retire, and endures a string of draft busts. There’s negativity at every turn.
“I was the biggest name on the roster at the time, but I was thrust into a situation that I really wasn’t prepared to handle. Reggie Lewis dies, and all of a sudden you go from being a complementary player to being the face of the franchise. There’s no way to prepare for that.”
The Dunk. It always comes back to The Dunk.
Funny thing is, Brown’s iconic sky dab almost never happens.
“I had a lot of dunks during my rookie year,” Brown says. “The All-Star Weekend was coming up, and Jon Jennings, a Celtics assistant coach at the time, was telling everybody that I needed to be included in the dunk contest. Thanks to his lobbying I was added as an alternate, and eventually slid into the lineup when one of the top guys pulled out.”
Shawn Kemp creates all of the buzz, while Brown arrives in Charlotte to little fanfare and even less recognition.
“It’s a few hours before the contest, and I’m sitting in the stands with Shawn Kemp and the rest of the guys,” he says. “We’re dressed in regular clothes, and I’m right beside Shawn, and this kid comes up and asks for his autograph. The kid points at me and says to Shawn, ‘Hey is that your little brother?’ I just looked at the kid and thought to myself, ‘You have no idea what I’m about to do in this contest.’”
Brown draws the seventh slot in the dunk order and wastes little time making an impression. Before his first dunk, he stands near mid-court, bends over and pumps the inflatable air bladders in his black Reebok Pump Omni Lite sneakers with both hands. The crowd, which includes an array of megastars like Will Smith, goes wild.
“I’d already signed a contract with Reebok, but pumping up my shoes before that first dunk wasn’t scripted,” he says. “I just said to myself, ‘This is for fun, you may never be in this situation again.’ I’d seen the contest on TV plenty of times, and I want to do something different. I want to get the crowd into it. Obviously, it worked.”
With that single act of showmanship, Brown accelerates the convergence between sneakers, hip-hop culture, and the American mainstream. An unknown wisp at 6-foot-2, 165 pounds just seconds before, the scrawny Boston rookie—Brown’s words—is suddenly the star of the NBA All-Star Weekend.
“People could relate to me,” he says. “I looked like an average guy, not a superhero in basketball shorts. There was an instant connection with the fans.”
Brown continues pumping before each subsequent dunk. After eliminating Kemp in the final round with a two-ball double-stuff that includes raking a ball placed on the back of the rim, followed by a 360 dunk off a bounce, Brown lines up for that final, iconic assault on the basket.
“I’d never done that dunk before,” Brown says. “I literally made it up on the spot. I wanted to do something that everybody would remember, like Michael Jordan taking off and dunking from the free-throw line, or Dominique Wilkins throwing down a vicious windmill dunk. I wanted people to remember Dee Brown doing something that nobody had ever done before. All those thoughts ran through my mind as I started running from half-court. When I jumped, I closed my eyes and put my head in my elbow. I knew that I was either going to make it, and everybody would be talking about me 25 years later, or I was going to miss it, and everybody was going to be talking about it 25 years later [laughs].”
Even without social media, Brown’s spontaneous improvisation brings instant fame.
“Larry Bird said, ‘Before that dunk, everybody wanted to shoot like me, and now everybody wants to dunk like Dee.’ It was the first time since he’d been in Boston that people would run past Larry Bird to get someone else’s autograph. He thought it was funny, and he didn’t mind at all.
“Outside of Boston, nobody knew who I was before that dunk,” Brown continues. “Having somebody from the Boston Celtics in a dunk contest was kind of like it snowing in San Diego. I literally became a household name overnight. After the contest, I couldn’t go anywhere in New England without being recognized by people who didn’t even follow the Celtics that closely. I was on TV all the time; I was doing Dunkin’ Donuts commercials, Reebok commercials, car commercials, radio spots. I was doing appearances in Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island. For a while, I was New England.”
Brown’s run in Boston ends with the arrival of Rick Pitino. Hailed as a savior when he arrives, Pitino trades away players at a dizzying rate, to his own detriment. Brown is a casualty of the house cleaning when he, along with Chauncey Billups, is traded to Toronto midway through the 1997–98 regular season.
“I was a bridge between the great Celtics teams of the ’80s and Rick Pitino’s Celtics,” Brown says. “I never thought I would leave Boston. I never asked for a trade from Boston. A new regime comes in and they want their own people, their own players. Pitino didn’t want the old Celtics there. He wanted his people there. I got it. Basketball’s a business. But I was very, very hurt.”
They say you never know what you’ve got until it’s gone. It works both way for Dee Brown and the Boston Celtics fans he leaves behind, fans who watch Rick Pitino push the Celtics deeper into disrepair.
“My biggest regret is not enjoying it as much I should have. When you’re in the moment, sometimes you don’t appreciate where you are in life. Then when it’s over, you miss it. That was me. I wish I had enjoyed being an NBA basketball player and the captain of the Boston Celtics more than I did. Back then you were either in the NBA and had a job or you didn’t. There was no D-League to fall back on. I think that fear of losing my job took a lot of the fun and enjoyment away from it. I didn’t savor the good times as much as I should have. I wish I could change that.”
Today, Brown looks back on his career and the era of Celtics basketball in which he played with great fondness.
“My 12-year-old son searches for me on Google. He’ll watch old footage on YouTube, and he’ll say, ‘Dad, you were pretty good.’ It helps me appreciate my career. When you’re grinding, you lose track of the fact that you’re playing against some of the best athletes in the world. Look at the NBA’s 50 Greatest list, and 20 to 25 of those players played during my era. I played against them. In order to have a 12-year NBA career, you have to play at a very high level. I did that, and I got to spend most of those years playing for the Boston Celtics, the best organization in the NBA. I was twenty when I was drafted. The Celtics raised me. I have nothing but love for Boston. I’ll always be a Celtic.”