The road less traveled

The lesson had been burned into Richard Brown’s consciousness from the moment he picked up a basketball.

While his peers emulated the NBA’s high-scoring, me-first stars during their youth-league games, Brown only could hear the sage words of his father, also named Richard, spoken so many times.

Play the game the right way, work with your teammates – good things will happen.

It was hard to do at first because, hey, everyone wants to be Batman; few people aspire to be Robin. And the 10-year-old Brown was no exception. But the more he was on the court, the better he understood the importance of being a player who made everyone around him better. And when that happened, Brown’s teams became more productive, and he felt better about himself.

“When I was little, I’d play with my dad in the backyard, and he’d be hard on me – I had to do it right or go in the house,” recalled Brown, now a senior point guard at Charlotte Latin School.

“Pretty soon, it just became a part of my game. I just try to play good defense, get my teammates involved and run the team. I really enjoy that.”

That approach has helped Brown become one of the Charlotte Independent Schools Athletic Association’s top point guards. Last season, he averaged 14 points and seven assists and helped the Hawks reach the state playoffs. The 5-foot-10, 165-pounder is one of the city’s surest ballhandlers and most dogged on-the-ball defenders.

But while Brown’s unselfish style of play endears him to coaches and teammates, it hasn’t always helped him in his pursuit of becoming a college basketball player.

Nonetheless, as his point-guard contemporaries, many sprouting north of 6 feet tall, began receiving heavy recruiting interest because of their gaudy statistics, Brown clung to his fundamental approach with the belief his father’s words eventually would prove prophetic.

“I’m a big Larry Brown fan, and I tried to instill in my son to play the right way,” Richard Sr. said, referencing the Charlotte Bobcats coach’s emphasis on the basics of the game. “I really do believe that pays off.”

A New York City native, Richard Sr. didn’t played competitive basketball, but that never kept him from teaching his son how to play at a high level. The elder Brown immersed himself in research, poring through books and Web sites to see what the sport’s foremost authorities believed to be the best approach. He also took his son to basketball camps and watched videos.