It wasn’t the way Bobby Brown had envisioned things.
Several months prior, the Cal State Fullerton guard was flirting with the NBA, working out with the Phoenix Suns (twice), the Clippers and Lakers of his hometown Los Angeles and attending the pre-draft camp in Orlando.
There he was in his last college game, though – an 81-56 loss to Cal Poly in the Big West Conference Tournament semifinals – going 3 of 15 from the floor.
“That was the worst game of my basketball career,” Brown recalled from L.A. in a phone interview, his voice barely carrying over a background storm of lightning-quick sneaker squeaks and a constant, thundering downpour of basketballs hitting hardwood. “I got injured in the first half, and after that game I couldn’t really even play for two months.”
Titans head coach Bob Burton certainly didn’t need to earn a master’s degree at Cal Poly in 1969 to recognize something was amiss.
“That wasn’t the normal Bobby Brown,” Burton told reporters following the March 9, 2007 thud of an ending.
Earlier that season, he saw Brown twice do a commendable Gilbert Arenas impersonation against his alma mater, long-bombing his way in Jerry West-emblazoned socks to an average of 27 points and seven assists.
He was there when the Bob Cousy Award finalist freakishly sank 11 of 13 from beyond the 3-point arc while dropping 47 points in a 94-65 scorching of Bethune-Cookman. (The scoring outburst, now immortalized in a four-and-a-half star YouTube clip, trails only one other in Big West annals – 53, netted in 1973 by Cal State L.A.’s Raymond Lewis, who coaching legend Jerry Tarkanian says was the greatest player he ever saw.)
Even against top-ranked UCLA, the 6-foot-2, 175-pound gunner put on a respectable showing in a 78-54 loss, going an efficient 6 of 11 from the floor on his way to a team-high 18 points.
But just like that, thanks to Cal Poly, a trip to the NCAA Tournament – a chance to blip on even more NBA teams’ radar – vanished into the Anaheim night.
Undeterred, and not wanting to put his communications degree to use quite yet, “Lil’ B” paid dues in Europe, leading Alba Berlin to the German club title by averaging 14.5 points and 4.1 assists in 16 games.
“It made me a lot tougher,” Brown says. “I needed that, to grow as a point guard.”
That development got him a shot with the New Orleans Hornets summer league team in Las Vegas, where he turned heads with 15.2 points and 6.3 assists per game in six starts.
ESPN’s Marc Stein called him a “smash-hit sleeper” of the league and wrote that he upstaged several first-round counterparts from larger schools, including Memphis Grizzly Mike Conley (of Ohio State), Charlotte Bobcat D.J. Augustin (Texas) and San Antonio Spur George Hill (IUPUI).
“They deserved to be drafted,” Brown says. “Once I got a chance, I just took full advantage of it. I’m going to come at whoever’s in front of me, regardless.”
The Hornets, Stein reported, were so impressed with the Big West product that they commissioned the Holy Grail of point guards himself – Chris Paul – to personally call the 23-year-old Westchester High grad and urge him to be his backup.
“I wanted to play in the summer league so bad, to go up against that kind of talent every day,” Brown says. “And to get a call from Chris Paul was amazing.”
Brown, however, set his sights on being more than nothing but a guaranteed understudy.
He signed with the Sacramento Kings on Friday, inking a deal that will reportedly pay him $442,114 (the league minimum) next season, with a player option for year two.
“I’m just going to be a team player, a great locker-room guy and am going to bring a winning attitude,” Brown says. “I’m ready to play right now.”
Although rumor held he was offered two to three times more money to stay overseas, Brown says his true goal was to realize his dream of playing in the NBA.
For the Big West, though, that’s been a dream largely deferred.
After Cal Poly joined it in 1996, just six of the conference’s products have played in the association.
They are: Long Beach State’s James Cotton (who played for the Seattle Sonics from 1997 to 1999) and Juaquin Hawkins (the Houston Rockets in 2002-03); Pacific’s Michael Olowokandi (the Clippers from 1998 to 2003, the Minnesota Timberwolves from 2003 to 2005 and the Boston Celtics from 2005 to 2007); Utah State’s Desmond Penigar (the Orlando Magic in 2003-04); Idaho’s Kaniel Dickens (the Portland Trail Blazers in 2003-04, the New Jersey Nets in 2004-05 and the Cleveland Cavaliers last season); and CSF’s Pape Sow (the Toronto Raptors from 2004 to 2007).
Not exactly a who’s-who of all-stars, that representation is a far cry from the conference’s late-’80s, early-’90s glory days, peaking when UNLV won the 1990 national championship.
Using that golden age’s offerings, a starting five could be formed of Greg Anthony, J.R. Rider, Cedric Ceballos, Larry Johnson and Armon Gilliam, with Larry O’Brien’s friends Craig Hodges, Brian Shaw and Bruce Bowen coming off the bench.
Since, however, Big West players’ stabs at David Stern’s playground have been about as in the dark as Olowokandi’s college search, which entailed randomly flipping through Peterson’s Guide to American Colleges, wherein he discovered the Stockton campus with which he became – dubiously, in retrospect – a No. 1 overall pick.
Could Brown put the Big West back on the NBA map?
“They would say the Big West isn’t the toughest competition, that you couldn’t do it against the bigger schools,” Brown says of critics during the draft-evaluation process. “But I think we’ve shown we could compete at any level.”
He says watching his former teammates’ run to the field of 64 last season not only put him at peace with the end of his college career, but could hold promise for the conference’s future.
Although the Titans lost to Wisconsin 71-56 in the opening round, they actually led 31-30 early in the second half, as their current sharpshooter, Josh Akognon, sniped his way to 31 points while knocking down 5 of 12 from deep.
“I think just looking at the years we’ve had at Fullerton, you can tell the Big West will keep getting tougher,” Brown says.
The Kings, for one, who 11 years ago held a week-long training camp in Mott Gym and whose primary advance scout – Bubba Burrage – played at Cal Poly before graduating in 1993, apparently have made the in-state consortium a staple of direction-hunting in their quest to return to prominence.
They reportedly scouted their first-round pick this year, Rider’s Jason Thompson, at Cal State Northridge on Feb. 23, worked out Akognon (who also considered coming out early only to return for his senior campaign) on June 3 and signed former UC Irvine forward Patrick Sanders to their summer-league squad.
Of course, if reaching the NFL or Major League Baseball were analogous to launching a rocket, getting footing on an NBA roster would be more like landing Apollo 13.
Just 360 active spots are available in the league – fewer than half of MLB’s 750, and a fourth of the NFL’s 1,696.
Only one Cal Poly player has ever been taken in the NBA Draft – Lewis Cohen by the Phoenix Suns in 1978’s 10th (yes, 10th) round. (Mike LaRoche was chosen by the ABA’s L.A. Stars in 1968.)
That doesn’t mean others aren’t collecting a check the way Brown did overseas, though.
Derek Stockalper, who starred as a forward at Cal Poly from 2004 to 2007, was named the Swiss Domestic Player of the Year last season after averaging 18.5 points and 6.2 rebounds for the Lugano Tigers, who finished 17-5 and second in their division.
Varnie Dennis, who from 2000 to 2004 bulled his way to third on Cal Poly’s career scoring list, contributed 9.8 points and six rebounds a game last season to Spain’s Gestiberica Vigo, which went 23-6 en route to a division title.
Rod Benson of the NBA Development League recently wrote for SLAM that draft picks “get the highway” and undrafted free agents “ride into town on a street with a few traffic lights and stop signs,” while those to go initially unsigned are “blindfolded, taken to the middle of the woods and told the NBA is out there.somewhere.”
For Brown, though, the journey may best be described as something of a checkers game. With him – and perhaps others looking to follow him, square-for-square – finally being kinged.