If there is one player capable of leading Lakeside to a win and a berth in the state tournament at the Tacoma Dome next week, it’s Brown. The 6 foot 3 junior guard is a prolific scorer and a terrific team leader who has the experience of playing in a state title game.
You’ll have to excuse Isiah Brown if he doesn’t think a pull-up 25-footer is a tough shot, or if a driving, off-balance floater isn’t too difficult. You see, Brown has had to score in much worse conditions than a poorly-ventilated high school gym.
Basketball is a year-round sport for Brown, and that means playing in the driveway during all seasons as a kid. Of course, growing up in Anchorage, Alaska, snow becomes an issue.
“It’s really hard to shoot with gloves on,” Brown said with a laugh before a Lakeside practice this week.
Gloves weren’t the only pain. After pulling on boots and snow pants, Brown would have to shovel the driveway. Or if he decided to head to the neighborhood gym, it wasn’t snow he’d have to contend with, but the looming presence of moose and bears. Of course, there was a fence and a door to keep the animals in the woods, but don’t underestimate the power of antlers.
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Weather and wildlife may be the biggest obstacles Brown dealt with while hooping as a kid, but he knows Rogers High School of Spokane will present a unique challenge Saturday when Lakeside travels to the east side of the state for a regional playoff game.
If there is one player capable of leading Lakeside to a win and a berth in the state tournament at the Tacoma Dome next week, it’s Brown. The 6 foot 3 junior guard is a prolific scorer — he led the Metro League with 28.3 points per game and scored 30-plus 13 times — and a terrific team leader who has the experience of playing in a state title game. He’s also dedicated his entire life to succeed in moments like these.
Brown comes from a basketball family. His dad, Gerald, was an outstanding scorer who had a career overseas before coaching high school basketball in Alaska. His older sister Aeisha picked up the talent and was adept at putting the ball in the bucket throughout her brief college career.
“They were both prolific, prolific scorers, prolific shooters,” said Brown, who sports square black-rimmed glasses and talks with a quiet confidence. “When we started this whole entire thing, that was the first thing that my dad harped on. He was not going to have me play and me not be able to shoot the ball. It’s cool now because we can kind of go back and forth about who’s the best shooter in the family, because I’ve gotten to a point where I can compete with them now.”
Isiah didn’t receive an offer from the University of Washington as an eighth-grader because he was a pure shooter. There are three phases to his offensive game — the three-pointer, getting to the rim and a mid-range jumper. All three have been hammered home by Gerald.
“The ability to score the ball was certainly something I wanted to teach my son, but more importantly, to be able to really score at all three levels,” Gerald said.
“A lot of guys don’t want to stop between that three-point line and the box to shoot the ball … the guys that I think stand out are the guys that can actually pull up; one dribble, two dribble, pull up and shoot the ball at the elbow.”
Gerald has always been a driving force in his son’s basketball development, and not just physically. The family moved to Seattle when Isiah was in sixth grade in large part to give him better basketball opportunities. Brown played with AAU teams based out of Houston, California and Seattle during elementary school.
When the NCAA changed the rules so that kids could only play on AAU teams in their home or bordering states, Brown was left in a tough spot. With Alaska not being part of the continental 48, it bordered no other states.
It was obvious he had a special talent, and despite some top players coming out of Alaska — Mario Chalmers, for one, who graduated high school with Brown’s older sister — the level of basketball wasn’t nearly high enough to challenge Brown. He was successful as part of an AAU team in Seattle and the family liked the area, so halfway through his sixth-grade year, they moved to Western Washington.
It’s a move that is paying off due to Brown’s commitment to the game.
“It’s nice to see that he’s continued to work and continued to just keep up and be one of the guys at the top,” Gerald Brown said. “He loves the game, that’s all I can say. I don’t think you can make somebody do that.”
Isiah Brown’s hard work paid off early in his high school career when he was part of a squad that fell just short of beating Rainier Beach in the state title game. The make-up of that team, though, was ripped apart due to graduation and transfers.
Now the Lions, thanks to three wins in loser-out games, are poised to make a return to the Hardwood Classic. They have a new coach, and almost a completely different roster. The one constant, though, is Brown.
“The kid can make up for a lot of coaching mistakes, that’s for sure,” Lakeside coach Shea Robinson said. “It’s very rare and it’s an honor to get to coach a kid like that because you realize how special they are. It’s not like you get one of those every year, or every four years.”