It would be wrong to say that Hubie Brown deserved a better sendoff than Bucks 135, Sixers 127 on Super Bowl Sunday because Hubie Brown was perfect for Bucks 135, Sixers 127. He would have bunny-hopped across an eight-lane highway for Bucks 135, Sixers 127 because for him—the last true basketball lifer—it wasn't the 135 or the 127 that moved him. It was the Bucks and Sixers part, and it would have been the same had he been given Pistons 112, Hornets 102, or Rockets 94, Raptors 87, or even anything involving the freshly re-deadified Wizards. Hubie was there unapologetically for The Game before him and only The Game before him. If you would have preferred Rockets-Raptors because it featured 81 points of better defense, you would have been wrong because every games was equal in his eyes— a chance to explain what was before him to people wanting to learn.
Hubie Brown is 91, and he looked and sounded every day of it 20 years ago when his coaching career ended. He coached somewhere for 30-some-odd years (even Wikipedia doesn't have firm dates for two of his high school jobs) and broadcasted somewhere for 29. He coached forever the same way, and he told the stories of the game the same way. He knew what he believed to be important, and walked and talked with that central precept for the entirety of his public life. He did it for so long and so unabashedly his way that he managed, somehow, to never fall out of fashion while anyone who came after him trying it Hubie's way was out of fashion immediately. The closest anyone came to doing Hubie was the much younger but no less self-assured JJ Redick, and he got in two years and change before he was hired to Hubie-up the Los Angeles Lakers.
Every broadcast was him in a huddle surrounded by players because that was his natural habitat and, because he never pretended to be anything else, he won an audience of non-players by being just that. More to the point, he won over all the networks he ever worked for because you can't fake genuine. He believed in the game and those who played it, and he never back-in-my-day'd any game in any era, nor did he make himself the hero of his own stories. The game was the hero. He was elated when it was done well, audibly disappointed when it wasn't, and couched neither in forced humor or attempts at post-modern hipness affectations. He didn't lament the absence of Giannis Antetokounmpo on Sunday because he got caught up in Damian Lillard's 43 points, eight assists, and seven rebounds, because that was the game that presented itself to him. No producer one-third his age could change him or break him, and no executive dared try. You wanted Hubie, you got Hubie, and nobody didn't want Hubie.
But there could only be one Hubie, because Hubie has no broadcasting heir. Analyst gigs come and go swiftly because broadcast executives tend to have the attention span and tastemaking abilities of a fruit fly; they go where the public was two years ago, and then desperately try to catch up. That was the secret of Hubie's longevity; he stayed in the same place confident that he was where he was supposed to be, and the way he was supposed to be when he got there. The people would find him, rather than him chasing them.
That he decided to walk away now almost surely has a great deal to do with him losing his wife and son within the last year. Living on the road for the last 50 years of his life made him no less devoted to his family, but the emptiness that awaits every trip home crushes even those who unapologetically love their work. But Hubie would have none of that sentimentality his last day on camera. There was a game to do, he did it, made it better for having done it, and walked away. In a world that fetishizes legacy in 30-year-olds, he lived his and left it for someone else to try and replicate it. Any who try will surely fail. That, too, is Hubie.
