What can Brown do for you?
It takes a while for an NBA player to establish his legacy in the league — he might, over time, become known for last-second big-shot daggers (à la Bob Horry), or for continuing to play past age 63 (Dell Curry), or for hugely entertaining, unprovoked three-ring freak-outs (Rasheed Wallace).
A few years ago it would have seemed unlikely that former No. 1 overall pick Kwame Brown would leave any legacy at all, but that situation has clearly changed. By the start of the ’07–’08 season, the strapping, stone-handed big man has earned himself a triple legacy: he is, at once, perhaps the biggest draft bust of all time (move over, Joe Barry Carroll); the player whose continuing mental and developmental immaturity after being drafted out of high school may have provoked the league to end the practice of allowing pre-collegians into the league; and now has become the player perhaps most likely to accrue a completely pointless arrest during the NBA off-season.
Brown may have sealed that final part of his trifecta this past week, when he pulled a Mount Etna act with some small-town Georgia cops. The details of the incident are sketchy, but his cousin, Charles Warren Jr., was arrested for a DUI in Valdosta, Georgia. It appears that Brown was not a passenger in the car when his cousin was driving, but was in the area. His cousin had turned the wrong way down a one-way street and gotten himself pulled over, at which point Brown walked over to the officers and became confrontational. The publicly released reports so far stink of a Gil Arenas situation (“You can’t arrest me — I’m a professional-basketball player”), especially the part where police say that Brown came over and “told the officers he was Warren’s cousin and the vehicle belonged to the basketball player.” Police say Brown at some point became “disruptive,” earning himself a disorderly conduct charge and an additional count of “interfering with an officer.” He was then hauled to the pokey and released on bond shortly thereafter.
Brown has been arrested twice before. Once was for a legendarily strange incident in which the seven-footer accosted a man who was on his way to a Los Angeles restaurant to celebrate his birthday. Brown grabbed the man’s $190, two-foot-by-two-foot birthday cake, and hurled it at him, splattering his back with chocolate filling. It seemed the man had arranged to pose for a photo with the cake and with Lakers forward Ronny Turiaf, whom he had run into on the street and who was celebrating his own birthday. For reasons that have never been fully explained, Kwame did the deed and then jumped into a white limo and fled the scene. Cake-strewn, the victim then complained to yet another Lakers forward, Lamar Odom, and nearly got himself beaten up by Odom’s bodyguard. (Odom, it should be noted, rescued the poor bastard, saying, “He didn’t do anything.”) Prosecutors considered filing a “grand theft of a person” charge against Brown, but ultimately declined.
Later, Brown was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault after a woman claimed he forced sex on her in his home after game three of the 2006 playoff series against the Phoenix Suns. Police dropped the charges after an exam showed no signs of sexual assault. Brown subsequently released a statement that was remarkable if only for its uncomfortable use of the word “stain,” given the context: “And even when the truth is finally determined, the stain of an allegation remains with no real recourse against or penalty to the accuser.”
Give Brown 18 points for the pointless pre-training-camp arrest. Had he gone another week without trouble, he’d be relaxing in Honolulu with the rest of the Lakers, sipping drinks with paper umbrellas. But instead he had to get all verbal and such with a bunch of dumb, rural Georgia cops. Not too bright. Oh, and by the way, as a player, the guy sucks ass.
What did Brown do to you?
Meanwhile, another NBA Brown — former Michigan State Spartan star and current Cleveland Cavalier guard Shannon Brown — was involved in a completely different sort of incident. Brown was at a Cleveland nightclub called Liquid with teammates Drew Gooden and Larry Hughes. All three of the men were wearing baseball caps. At first, club officials asked the players to remove the hats. Then, after Brown and company informed them who they were, they were allowed to keep them on.
But bouncers at the club balked, and Brown was tossed out of the club for a dress-code violation. After trying to find his teammates at another entrance to the club, some bouncers apparently jumped on Brown, stuck a knee on the back of his neck and kept him pinned to the ground. Way to help out the guard-starved home team, Clevelanders.
Brown’s filed assault charges against the bouncers. Let’s see if, as punishment, the courts send them into the Cavs locker room for 10 unsupervised minutes.