USD Men's Basketball 2005-2006

CAVS HAVE SAN DIEGO CONNECTIONS

by Brian Windhors~ 10-4-05 Knight Ridder Newspapers

had risen from a player at San Diego into a respected coach and NBA executive, and Brown immediately found an idol to chase. Egan made afew calls on his behalf and talked Bickerstaff, then the general manager of the Denver Nuggets, into taking on Brown as an unpaid intern. "He'd never had an intern before and wasn't sure about the idea," Egan said. "But I had a lot of good things to say about Mike, and he was will– ing to work for free." Brown was supported by his parents for the summer internship. He ended up earning just $1,500, half of which he had to use to repair his car. But he impressed Bickerstaff enough to offer him afull-time job in the team's video room, and soon he was on atrack to becoming the NBA's second-youngest head coach. "Coach Egan and Coach Bickerstaff are the two men most responsible for getting us into the league," Brown said. "They made calls for us and helped us with contacts. Otherwise, we'd never have made it." Two summers later, Egan made asimilar call to Atlanta Hawks general manager Pete Babcock about Grant. When Grant came to San Diego for his recruiting visit, Brown was his host, and the two have been close since. Seeing how Brown had used acontact and some hard work to get in the door in Denver, he had the same goal. "It was sort of the same deal. Pete had never had an intern either and I just sort of gave him the idea," Egan said. "Now, that's away a lot of young guys get into the league, but at the time it was anew idea." "I basically had no idea how I was going to get by," Grant said. "I figured if it didn't work out, I had my car and I could always go home." Babcock agreed to give Grant ajob in the Hawks' video room and pay him $6 an hour. To make ends meet, he worked for the equipment man• ager washing towels after practices and games. After his internship, he, too, was offered afull-time job and began to work his way up. While Brown was advancing to assistant coaching jobs in San Antonio and Indiana, Grant climbed the front-office ladder in Atlanta, eventually being named assistant general manager last season. Egan also decided to try his hand in the NBA, leaving San Diego in 1994 to join the San Antonio Spurs coaching staff. He also worked on the Warriors coaching staff when Musselman was the head coach. Now he's working for two of his former players. "I know technically that I'm his boss and I make more money than him," Brown said. "But I still feel like he's the one who's in charge." It's all combined for quite an impressive legacy for the San Diego group, who try to get together at least once ayear. Egan is just as proud of former players like Randy Bennett, the coach at St. Mary's in California, and Todd Lee, the coach at Kentucky Wesleyan, who have become suc– cessful in the college ranks. "Most of them are just really, really talented young people," Egan said. "The fact that they're all in the business and doing well isn't a surprise." Grant made athree-day drive from Southern California to Atlanta, unsure what was going to be waiting for him.

CLEVELAND • (KRT) • They call themselves the "San Diego Mafia."

It sounds sinister, but this group is hardly the Cosa Nostra, though they are indeed underground. Name the universities with notable lineage in the modern NBA, and North Carolina, Duke and UCLA will be at the top of the list. And, of course, those University of San Diego Toreros. Sure enough, the small Catholic school might not be a collegiate power, but it has been quite the cradle of NBA coaches and execu– tives currently shaping the league. And, now, the unofficial capital is Cleveland. Three top members of the Cavaliers organization put down their roots at San Diego. In fact, first-year head coach Mike Brown, who is opening his training camp today, assistant coach Hank Egan and assistant general manager Chris Grant were all part of the same college team a little more than adecade ago. They're not alone. Bernie Bickerstaff, the coach and general manager of the Charlotte Bobcats, is also an alum. The rest of the group is scattered across the league in various posi– tions. Former Golden State Warriors coach and current Memphis Griz– zlies assistant Eric Musselman is one. Indiana Pacers vice president David Morway is another. Los Angeles Clippers assistant coach Neal Meyer was ateammate of Brown and Grant's on ateam coached by Egan. Atlanta Hawks assistant coach David Fizdale succeeded Brown as the team's starting point guard in the mid-'90s. Most of their backgrounds and stories are much the same. They were barely given anything and had to work their way up slowly through the NBA ranks. "Which is anice way of saying none of us were good enough to actu– ally play in the NBA," Grant said. "I don't know if there's a single trait we all share. I think for the most part we're all hard workers who sort of followed in each other's footsteps." The "godfather" is undoubtedly Egan, 67, who was Brown and Grant's coach at San Diego. Egan has been coaching since shortly after gradu– ating from the Naval Academy in 1960. The Brooklyn native chose to serve his time in the Air Force, which led to an assignment in the physi– cal education department at the Air Force Academy. He rose through the ranks to become Air Force head coach and eventually moved on to the same job with the Toreros. Unable to compete for top-shelf players against the Pac-10 Conference, Egan often sought out hard-nosed, high-IQ players who understood the game and were able to play multiple positions. That's how he found Brown and Grant, both of whom were at junior colleges and both of whom later played multiple positions for him. "You can say it, we weren't McDonald's All-Americans," Brown said. "We had success on the court because of effort and hard work and we've done the same in the NBA. Most of us started at the bottom of the totem pole." When Brown was asenior and coming to grips with the fact that his playing career was coming to aclose, he read an article about Bick– erstaff and for the first time truly learned his background. Bickerstaff