Hubie Brown, a basketball coach, broadcaster and always a teacher, calls his final game at 91

Hubie Brown had just taken his first college coaching job in 1968 and didn't expect that he'd also be asked to teach. So, for his one year as an assistant at William & Mary, he taught two elective basketball courses. Brown, now 91 and set to work his final game as a broadcaster, never stopped teaching the sport in more than 55 years since. Only his audience grew from college students to players, coaches and TV viewers all over the world. "It's the most remarkable thing and it's not hyperbole: He has probably taught more people about the game of basketball than anybody that's ever lived," broadcasting partner Mike Breen said. Brown and Breen will work ABC's telecast of Sunday's game between Philadelphia and Milwaukee, where Brown got his first NBA opportunity as an assistant coach with the Bucks teams featuring Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson in 1972. For the next five decades, he'd move from the coach's box to the TV table and back, earning induction in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2005 for his contributions to basketball. Brown has called 18 NBA Finals between TV and radio during his 35 years as a national TV and radio analyst. Yet he says he'll be nervous Sunday as he was doing every game, despite his extraordinary preparation that included watching both teams play at least twice in the week beforehand. "You're always nervous," Brown said. "That's me. I don't worry about anybody else. Because you want to be able to paint the picture, you want to be able to educate the fan to another level of expertise, and you realize it's a team doing it, not yourself." The team, for Brown, is his partner along with the director and producer. The time they spend together preparing, becoming like family, reminds him of coaching. Not surprisingly, his players recognize aspects of his coaching in his broadcasting. "I used to love listening to him, because he was quite different than any other broadcaster that was on the air," said Hall of Famer Bernard King, who led the NBA in scoring while playing for Brown with the New York Knicks in 1984-85. "And I think that the fans that love basketball, the intricacies of the game, he would help the viewer understand exactly what happened and why it happened. And so the viewers are being educated as they watch the game, not just being entertained, and that was a high mark of what he did as a broadcaster." Those who listened through the years recognized some of Brown's trademarks, such as calling the lane "the painted area," and offering strategy tips for a team by saying "you must." "My favorite is when he was really happy about a play, like he'd always say: 'That's it! That's it! That's it!'" Breen said. "And then when he got mad, you could tell when he got mad, when you weren't playing the game right, just in the tone in his voice." Brown was so detailed in his own coaching that King said the Knicks even had a specific play for when an opponent missed a free throw, called power right, in which the forward would sprint down the left side, cut across the lane and post up on the right block. So when Brown was impressed with what other coaches ran, he wanted to highlight it. "That's always a tribute to the coaching staff for preparing their teams, and you never want to not be able to emphasize that to the fans when you see it," he said. Brown had no experience and no plans for TV when he was first approached to do work for USA Network in 1981. He would return to coaching the next year with the Knicks, and then it was back to broadcasting from the time he left in the 1986-87 season until returning to coaching in 2002 with Memphis, where he would win his second NBA Coach of the Year award. Even when Brown finished there, he wasn't done being a coach. Breen was calling the NBA Finals on ABC for the first time in 2006 and was nervous, trying too hard to follow instructions to tailor his vocabulary toward first-time viewers the event would draw. At the first timeout, while Miami and Dallas were getting their instructions, Brown gave some of his own. "He grabbed me by the arm — and grabbed it tight — and he looked me in the eye and he says, 'Just call the game the way you always call it and we'll be fine,'" Breen said. "And it just relaxed me." On Sunday, it will be Breen's turn to help Brown through after a difficult last year in which both his wife and son died. "He's not interested in people showering him with love and tributes," Breen said. "But the goal is to let him analyze the game like he always does, teach the game to the viewers, but at the same time pay him the tribute that he deserves, because he's given his life to the game."