CHICAGO — Pedestrians walking in downtown Chicago where Ida B. Wells Drive and Wabash Avenue intersect might hear a cacophony of sound coming out of the Goodman Center.
Maybe even enough to rise above the traffic noise.
That’s where Dee Brown is going to spend his summer. The newly-hired Roosevelt University men’s basketball coach already has his new team on the court after taking control of the program last week.
“Very vocal,” Brown said, describing his style as a coach “Very passionate. I care for the players. It’s tough love. If they need to be yelled at, I definitely take it to that level. … You’d hear me if you’re outside. You’ll hear my voice. That’s how much I pour into the game.”
Brown poured just as much effort into pursuing the Roosevelt job, too, making his move as soon as he got word through contacts at the university that the Lakers were looking for a new basketball coach.
The former Illinois All-American was the one doing the pursuing. The one that reached to the Lakers’ leadership team to let them know he had serious interest.
It just made too much sense for the 37-year-old Brown not to.
The location was obviously a plus given Brown grew up in Maywood, starred at Proviso East and Illinois before his professional playing career and spent the last five seasons as an assistant coach at Illinois-Chicago. Roosevelt happens to be just two miles away from the UIC campus.
Brown was also impressed with the facilities the NAIA program had and the emphasis Roosevelt had put on academics.
“It all made sense for me taking over my first program understanding where it is and what it has to offer,” Brown said. “And I like the vision that they have for it. They want to compete for championships. Degrees matter. Education matters. Basketball is going to be the face. They believed in me. They wanted a guy like myself. It just all meshed and came together.”
Plan in place
Brown was named Roosevelt’s new coach June 27 and immediately went to work. The first week on the job meant making the media rounds — selling Roosevelt and his vision for the program — and now he’s in the gym working with his team while piecing together a coaching staff.
“I just thought about my mom would be proud of me,” Brown said about his emotions when he got work he would get the job. “I’m very blessed. I know how hard it is to obtain a head coaching position. I was very grateful and appreciative and just thought of the people that helped me. It’s time to work now. I’ve been preparing myself for this moment. I took it all in, let it process and now it’s time to work.”
Brown didn’t approach his pursuit of the Roosevelt job — his first as a head coach — casually. He reached out to several mentors he has in the profession for their expertise in what he would face as a first-time head coach. Brown said he wasn’t “too proud to reach out and get knowledge from my guys.”
The advice he got was basically a consensus.
Hire the right staff.
Have a plan for the first 30 days and implement it. That Brown would be in position to lead a program, though, was seen as inevitable.
“There was no doubt in my mind when I coached Dee that he would someday become a coach,” former Illinois coach Bruce Weber said. “Dee will bring that same passion and energy that he had as a player to this job. Dee also has that special exhilarating personality that will not only help him recruit but also take the Roosevelt basketball program to new levels.”
Getting a start
Brown’s move from his role as a Division I assistant coach to in charge of an NAIA program, though, was basically the former Illini taking control of his coaching career. Even if it meant dropping several levels.
“It’s hard to get a head coaching job,” Brown said. “It’s hard to plan it out. I know guys who have been assistants for 10-15 years before they got an opportunity. I was just patient and waiting for the right move. What better opportunity than stay home in Chicago and coach in your backyard? Timing is everything.”
That’s what stood out to Deon Thomas when he saw the news of Brown’s hiring at Roosevelt.
Thomas, the all-time leading scorer in Illinois history with 2,129 points, knows a thing or two about coaching basketball at multiple levels. After 14 seasons playing professionally, he started his coaching career as the head coach and athletic director at Lewis & Clark Community College in Godfrey. Then came time at UIC as an assistant before he returned to his alma mater as an associate director of development in Chicago.
“I though it was a great move from him,” Thomas said. “He could have waited and bided his time and been an assistant coach for 10 years and hoped he became a head coach. Now he’ll put together a team. He’ll manage coaches. He’ll organize and manage practices and players.
“Roosevelt, they’re serious and they showed they’re serious about being successful at their level because they brought in somebody like Dee Brown. … I’ve met very few people that have buried themself into the game like Dee Brown. I think that’s what Roosevelt is getting when they get someone like him. The guy knows the game of basketball. The guy was a great leader on the ’05 team. He’s been that on his professional teams. When life kicked him in the butt, he didn’t stay down and got up and kept fighting. That’s what you want to teach your kids on the basketball court.”
More work to do
Thomas acknowledged he had plenty to learn as a first-year coach. It struck him early that he’d have to adjust how he taught the game to his team. His players weren’t the pros he’d played with for more than a decade. Establishing the right culture was important and so was putting together the right staff.
That’s Brown’s current challenge. He started the process earlier this week after the Fourth of July holiday with a list of candidates already in mind. Filling out his staff is a matter of finding coaches who want to be at Roosevelt and want to see the program succeed.
“How can they impact the program?” Brown said. “I like talented guys. I like to bring guys that want to be head coaches. They’ve got the lifelong learning mentality where they want to learn and grow in their positions and they want to be really good assistants.”
Once his staff is complete, Brown can move on to shaping the program ahead of his inaugural season as coach. Roosevelt has several players set to return from last year’s 19-12 team that finished fifth in the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference competing against schools like Olivet Nazarene, Indiana-South Bend, Indiana Northwest and Saint Xavier.
“Coming into a team that won, we want to take it to the next level,” Brown said. “Getting around them, getting a feel for them, is going to be exciting. … I know how I want to play. I know some of the things I’m going to implant. I’m excited to get out there and play and put in things I wanted to do stylistically. I’ve always had a vision for that and learned from so many different philosophies and so many different guys. I’ll put in all the things I want to do culturally (and) watch my ideas and watch my plan unfold.”
