On his own

Sporting News, The, August 6, 2001 by Sean Deveney

No. 1 pick Kwame Brown must make a quick transition from a small-town lifestyle to big-time expectations

Five years ago, Kwame Brown was 5-11, an eighth-grader playing point guard and answering to the nickname "Bobo."

He hung out in Howard Coffin Park on Gloucester Street in Brunswick, Ga., just across the street from the Days Inn where his mother, Joyce, once worked before back problems forced her to go on disability. His father was in prison--still is--so Joyce learned to stretch the disability check to provide what she could for her eight children.

Bobo Brown would grow up like most teenagers in the Dixville section on the south side of Brunswick, a neighborhood marked by single-floor houses and unmowed lawns. He would attend Glynn Academy, hoping to make the basketball team. He would spend weekend nights cruising with friends by the strip malls along Altama Avenue, over and over, like a parade celebrating adolescent boredom. He would graduate from Glynn, and then ... well, who knows?

"It's hard because not a lot of young people really leave the area," Brown says. "Not a lot of minorities, especially."

Bobo Brown graduated from Glynn, and he did manage to leave the area, also leaving behind the nickname. He has not been to Brunswick in nearly two months. The only vestige of him at Coffin Park is a letterboard sign reading, "Good Luck, Kwame." He is 19 now and has grown a foot since his days as an eighth-grader, without losing the ballhandling and quickness that made him a pretty good 14-year-old point guard. Those attributes persuaded the Wizards to make Brown the No. 1 pick in this year's NBA draft and to give him a contract worth at least $11.9 million over three years. Not only did Bobo leave Brunswick, he did so in style.

But Brunswick is part of the fast-forming legend surrounding Kwame Brown, a legend that sometimes has outpaced facts. In early July, Joyce Brown was upset at comments made by Kwame's friend and mentor, John Williams, a pastor who runs The Gathering Place, a center on St. Simon's Island, Ga., where teens hold weekly discussions and give peer guidance. Williams, speaking on the Black Entertainment Network, said that on his first trip to the Brown home, there was no food in the refrigerator--he reportedly apologized for the remark. Certainly, with Joyce Brown's injury and the absence of a father, things were not easy for Kwame's family, but, he says, "It wasn't so bad, really. We had adversities, but we only got better because of them." All the kids helped out their mother. Kwame worked full-time on a construction site two summers ago.

Brunswick (population 15,600), like Brown's upbringing, isn't so bad, either. Rural southern hamlets stricken with poverty make good settings for Faulkner-style dramas, but Brunswick does not quite fit that convention. It's a town draped in Spanish moss and oppressive heat, but there are paved roads, folks wear shoes and the city is the center of a growing port and vacation spot in the southeast corner of Georgia.

Still, Brown's legend already is perpetuating itself, and even if things were not so bad, Brown knows he has little control over that. He always has been uncomfortable in the spotlight. He committed to play collegiately at Florida during his junior year in high school because, as Glynn coach Dan Moore says, "The recruiting process is a `me' process. That's not Kwame." In the weeks leading up to this year's May 12 deadline to declare as an early entry candidate for the NBA draft, Brown was swamped by media asking whether he would go pro or go to Florida. He dodged writers at his school and at home.

"It was pretty bad," Brown says. "I know the only thing I can do is go out and play. Everyone writes what they want to write, but I just play basketball."

There are few who play basketball the way Brown does, with that Bobo Brown point guard mentality melded to Kwame Brown s size and intensity. In his first game with the Wizards' summer league-club in Boston, his first official competitive outing as a professional, Brown displayed slippery-fast feet on drives and a dependable jumper he likes to take from 15 feet, square to the basket.

"You look at a guy that size," Celtics rookie Joseph Forte says, "and he is not supposed to be that quick. You get over to him, and he goes by you."

It must be pointed out that summer-league competition is vastly inferior to the NBA's level and that Brown, despite flashing his ability, showed he has much to learn. He must get used to the idea of playing within an offense and how the Wizards' playbook works. He says his high school team used only a handful of plays. Brown also struggled defensively in Boston. As impressive as his speed and shooting are, he is not prepared for playing in the post, and not just because he is slender.

"He needs everything down there," says one scout. "He needs muscle, he needs moves, he needs instinct. Don't go writing that he's a bad player--he is going to be terrific with the way he moves and shoots. But he's a power forward, and right now if you send him down low, he looks lost."