In the above flashback photo, Mike Brown celebrates winning the 2003 NBA Finals as an assistant coach for the San Antonio Spurs with his wife and two sons. (Twitter/Elijah Brown)
Golden State Warriors interim head coach Mike Brown, who is subbing for Steve Kerr, is married to Carolyn Brown. The couple have two sons, 22-year-old Elijah and 19-year-old Cameron.
The Warriors are on the road to their second NBA Finals championship in three years, and are in the Western Conference Finals. They’re playing the San Antonio Spurs, where Brown got his start under Gregg Popovich in 2000. Brown was on the coaching staff that won the 2003 NBA Finals. In 2004, he joined the Indiana Pacers and finally got his first head coaching job with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2005.
The 47-year-old Brown stuck with the Cavs until 2010, when he was fired for the first time. The following year, he coached the Los Angeles Lakers. Five games into the 2012-13 season, Brown was fired again. He returned to Cleveland in 2013 and was fired a third time in 2014. In 2016, the Warriors hired him as an assistant. So far, the Warriors have yet to lose a game this postseason.
Here’s what you need to know about Brown’s wife.
1. Carolyn & Brown Met in DEnver When She was 23 Years Old & He Was Working for the Nuggets
Mike Brown. (Getty)
Brown got his start in the NBA as an unpaid video intern with the Denver Nuggets in 1992. He worked for the team for five seasons, eventually rising to a scout. It was duirnng his early years in Denver that he met Carolyn.
According to a Cleveland.com 2009 profile of Carolyn, the two met at a Denver bar. Carolyn, who was 23 at the time, told Brown that she already had a boyfriend, but that didn’t stop him from pursuing her. The two clicked almost instantly, spending hours on the phone the next night.
“I thought she was amazing,” Brown told Cleveland.com in 2009. By the next night, “That was it,” Carolyn added. At the time, Carolyn was a student at the University of Colorado.
“Carolyn didn’t ever really get too serious too fast, so for her to do something like that was pretty out of character,” Liz Lockley, Carolyn’s sister, told Cleveland.com. “So I was shocked. I knew that he had to be a good guy for her to fall like that. After I spent time with him, I could see why. He’s just a genuinely nice person.”
Lockley and Carolyn grew up in Evergreen, Colorado. They are biracial twins and were adopted at 16 days old. According to Cleveland.com, they never met their biological father, but they later found out that he was a coach and died. They did meet their biological mother and have gotten to know her family.
2. Son Elijah Brown Played College Basketball at Butler & New Mexico
Carolyn and Brown’s eldest son is Elijah Brown, a 22-year-old college basketball player. Elijah started his college career at Butler, where he played as a freshman. He transferred to New Mexico after his freshman year, missing the 2014-15 season.
In March 2017, ESPN reported that Elijah will graduate this spring. He’s planning on playing a fourth season though and transferred to Oregon.
“We are grateful of the contributions that Elijah has made to our basketball program,” head coach Craig Neal told ESPN in a statement. “He has matured and developed over the last three years, which led him to being one of the top Mountain West players the last two seasons. He is an incredibly talented player, who brought a lot of excitement to our fans and to The Pit.”
Elijah averaged 18.8 points, 3.1 assists and 5.4 rebounds in the 2016-17 season.
3. Elijah Calls Carolyn ‘The Best Mom Ever’
Elijah Brown. (Getty)
In an Indianapolis Star interview in 2013, Elijah aid Carolyin is “the best mom ever.”
Carolyn says that Elijah has inherited a lot from his father. “They’re very similar,” Carolyn told the Star in 2013. “They both have a yearning to get better, so settling is not an option. They both want to be the best in their craft.”
In her Cleveland.com 2009 interview, Carolyn also said she thinks Elijah is as outgoing as her husband. Cameron is quiet and tries to stay out of the spotlight, like his mother.
“Mike and I are private people,” Carolyn told Cleveland.com. “Our favorite place to be is at home, although Mike might say second would be in the gym with one of our kids. But we are not very social people. Anywhere with just the four of us is the greatest place for us.”
4. Son Cameron Plays Football at Case Western Reserve University
Bout to watch the best team in the NBA get this W #DubNation
While Brown has moved on from Cleveland, his younger son Cameron is still there as a biology student at Case Western Reserve University. Cameron plays defensive end on the football team. According to his college bio, he also played baseball at Mater Dei High School in California and Westlake High School in Ohio.
After the 2016 season, his first in college, he was selected to the All-PAC Second Team and the All-UAA First Team and had the most sacks on the CWRU team with 4.5. HE’s followed in the footsteps of his uncle, Anthony Brown, who played for the Cincinatti Bengals in 1995-1998 and the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1999.
Cameron was with his father in May 2016, when there was a fire at their Cleveland home. As SFGate.com notes, Brown rushed down to the kitchen, where he saw flames coming from a pan Cameron used to make pecan pies. Brown slipped on the cooking oil, and suffered second- and third-degree burns on his right leg, as well as first- and second-degree burns on his right foot, left leg, arms and face.
“It was kind of a life-altering experience for me,” Brown told SFGate.com. “It just reminded me that anything can happen at any time.”
5. Carolyn & Brown Were Guardians for WNBA Player Nirra Fields
Mike and Carolyn Brown were Nirra Fields’ guardians while she was in high school. (Getty)
When Canadian basketball national team player Nirra Fields enrolled at Mater Dei High in Santa Ana, California, Brown helped Fields make her dream a reality. Brown and Carolyn became guardians for Brown, the Orange County Register reported in 2011.
The Vancouver native became friends with the Brown family when she accepted a scholarship to Regina High School in Cleveland, her WNBA bio notes. When the Browns moved to California, she joined them. She later enrolled at UCLA, with the help of Brown.
“I met the family, I met their two sons,” Fields told the Daily Bruin. “Me and Ms. Brown just clicked the first day we met each other. I was sort of the daughter she never had.”
During the 2015-2016 season, Fields reached the WNBA, playing for the Phoenix Mercury.
