What each NBA coach would be doing if he wasn’t an NBA coach
By John Buhler
Brett Brown: An optimistic high school remedial math teacher
Brett Brown has made a living teaching kids that are over their skis how to kind of play NBA basketball. Like Buzz Lightyear, he never gives up and he never surrenders. One could argue that nobody embraces the art of teaching from an NBA sideline more than Brown.
If he wasn’t losing most of his games with the Philadelphia 76ers, he would be the most optimistic high school math teacher the world has ever seen. He’s not in it for the money, clearly, as he is in it to reach these kids.
Nobody is better at wanting to teach Algebra to 18 and 19-year-old kids that still aren’t sure what exactly a variable is than Brown. He is essentially the John Calipari of describing the nuances of a geometric plane. One day, Brown will reach his goal of mentioning the word “cosine” in class. Like a constant, his faith in these kids is never wavering.
However, he usually has to go off on the most extreme of tangents to keep these kids engaged. Brown holds Pi Day twice weekly because he feels pizza is the best way to explain the complexities of diameters and radii to kids who write sevens that look like gammas.
Just when Brown has successfully explained to a kid that ‘x’ could technically be anything (even a car), the kid gets drafted by a on-level math teacher that will drop derivatives in his face constantly. Brown gets a little sad, but embraces the ample opportunities that lie ahead for him in the classroom.
Of course, he also gets to coach a local powerhouse varsity basketball team on the hardwood. Yes, Brown’s teams haven’t lost at home in five years. However, he takes the most joy teaching 17-year-olds how to multiply by nine using one’s fingers. Brown is the most respected teacher in the school district by a wide margin. He also wins 90 percent of his high school basketball games, so that helps.