The sound of the squeaking sneaker streaking across the hardwood floor has gone silent for far too long.
Matt Brase hasn’t known what to do with himself. It’s the only sound he’s ever known.
Lute Olson’s grandson has followed in his grandfather’s — and his older sister’s — footsteps, but for the first time since he can remember, the ball is no longer bouncing. The coronavirus pandemic has been like one long timeout.
But he can almost hear it. The whistle. The sneakers. The bouncing ball.
Forget almost hearing it.
He can almost taste it.
• • •
The Rockets were on a flight heading from Houston to Los Angeles, hovering somewhere high above the New Mexico/Arizona border, when word broke that their season would be halted. They turned around midair and headed back to Houston.
Brase remembers thinking, “I guess we’re not playing the Lakers tomorrow.”
It was a sudden and stunning stop to what had started as a season with such promise.
When we first spoke back in November, the regular season had just started, and Brase was fully engrossed in helping the Rockets reach a new stratosphere. He’d added responsibilities as an assistant during the offseason, and he had high hopes for the season ahead.
Blessed with one of the best scorers in NBA history — James Harden — and with the addition of the ultimate Swiss army knife, triple-double specialist Russell Westbrook, Houston entered this season looking to reenter the NBA’s elite.
In 2016-17, Mike D’Antoni’s first season as head coach, the Rockets improved from 41 to 55 wins and D’Antoni won NBA Coach of the Year honors; a year later, the Rockets led the NBA with 65 wins but were clipped down by the Golden State Warriors in a heated Western Conference Finals. Last year, they dropped to 53 wins and fell to the Dubs in the conference semifinals, and through 64 games this year, the team had 40 wins and 24 losses and was the sixth seed in the West, though just four games out of the No. 2 spot.
Brase had one eye firmly on the postseason when the pandemic hit.
His role had evolved this season, essentially adding “special situations coordinator” to his budding résumé. With the NBA establishing new coach’s challenge rules this year, Brase — who learned to handle challenges while head coach of the Rio Valley Vipers in 2017 — became D’Antoni’s right-hand man in the most stressful of situations: not just challenges, but end-of-quarter and end-of-game scenarios, clock management set-ups and foul/don’t foul circumstances.
For a coach with his eye set on the ultimate prize — a coveted NBA head coaching gig — this year was shaping up to be an important one.
“That’s the dream,” Brase said, “But the reality is there are 30 of those jobs in the world. I wake up every morning striving to get to that level.”
Matt Brase shares a lot of similarities with his grandfather Lute Olson, says Matt’s mother, Jody. “They get a good read on people.”
Brase knows this time in his career — soaking up every last ounce of strategy and data analysis from one of the truly groundbreaking front offices in professional sports, while learning firsthand from a two-time NBA COY in D’Antoni — will lay the foundation for years to come.
But sometimes he can’t help it.
His mind drifts.
He is in another time, in another locker room.
He thinks back to his childhood — watching his legendary grandfather mold a new mix of personalities every year, always on the verge of greatness — and he can’t help but think basketball is so much more than strategy and data.
• • •
It was 1997, and Matt was a sophomore at Catalina Foothills High School, and nothing was more important to him in the world than Arizona basketball.
The Wildcats had limped into the NCAA Tournament after going 11-7 in the gauntlet that was then the Pac-10, reeling after dropping both stops of the Bay Area road swing by a combined three points to close the season.
Burned by three first-round upsets in four years from 1992-95, Lute had issued an edict: no family at the first weekend.
But then came an eight-point win over South Alabama in the first round and a four-point win over College of Charleston in the Round of 32, and Matt got a phone call from his grandmother, Bobbi.
“Wanna come?”
Matt remembers it like it was yesterday: The trip out to Birmingham, Alabama, for the Sweet 16; the two-story suite at the hotel, just Lute, Bobbi and Matt; the Penny Hardaway shoes Bobbi handed him as he got on the team bus (“I was so excited! Penny Hardaway shoes! I loved those shoes,” he said); the button-down, long-sleeve shirt; the sudden realization: “I get to miss school for this?!”
The Wildcats upset top-seeded Kansas in the Sweet 16, then drew No. 10 seed Providence in the Elite Eight. That was a nail-biter, but the Wildcats prevailed, 96-92, in overtime. At this point, Matt had become Bobbi’s good-luck charm. Or, at least, his shirt had.
“My grandma was superstitious,” he said. “‘You’re sitting next to me, you’re wearing that shirt,’ so I sat next to her all four games. I had better seats than the rest of the family.”
So here’s Matt, about 15 years old, sitting courtside with his grandmother, for the two greatest games in Arizona basketball history.
All these years later, his seats are even better.
• • •
So what did young Matt learn on those sidelines, for all those years?
“The most important thing is trust,” he said. “If there is trust and loyalty going both ways. They’re not just basketball players, they’re humans, too.”
Better question: What didn’t he learn?
The answer is not much, even if Matt didn’t realize that he was being schooled all the time.
“It wasn’t 100% basketball,” said Jody Brase, Lute’s daughter, Matt’s mother, and the principal at Catalina Foothills High. “I can still see Matt sitting on dad’s lap, and dad reading him a book. He was a grandpa. A typical grandpa. They never shot hoops together. They played cards and read books and had lots of conversations. I don’t think there was a purposeful education of basketball. Matt just liked to sit and listen. Because he did that, Dad was very willing to talk about what was happening. It just came with natural conversations. It was about life.
“There are 13 grandchildren, and not all of them had a passion in basketball.”
Both Matt and older sister Julie — arguably the best women’s basketball player in Tucson history and a longtime coach of the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury — sure did.
“Matt grew up with a ball in his hands and that’s what he thought all kids did, just watch ESPN every day instead of cartoons,” Jody Brase said. “It wasn’t because his grandfather was famous, it’s because he loved what basketball was. He definitely knows the game well. He’s a student of the game. I try to talk basketball with my dad and my son, and I can’t. It’s not my language. I know when the team’s good because we scored more points than the other team.
“It skipped a generation, didn’t it? And that’s fine with me.”
But she knows what she sees, and she sees Lute in Matt.
When the Rockets make a particularly savvy in-game adjustment, Jody Brase wonders: Did Matt have his fingerprints on that?
“Matt and my dad, they get a good read on people,” she says. “For an assistant coach, Matt knows his role, and depending on his situation, he’ll take the read of the coach and tailor his role. To be the most valuable asset for the head coach; it’s not about his ego or his desire — and my dad was the same way. He’d take players, get a read on them, and not force them to be different, but change himself to manage them.”
• • •
Brase may have not foisted his famous forefather on his friends, but of course, there were perks. Forget the Final Fours. Matt remembers the plain old practices.
“I’ve been very fortunate to grow up in the Arizona basketball family,” Brase said. “I was 6 when we went to the Final Four. I thought Steve Kerr and Sean Elliott were my best friends. All these years later, who’d have thought I’d coach against Steve? In middle school, Joseph Blair beat me up every day; then JB was my assistant coach for three years in the G-League. He was throwing me into lockers and turns into a super-loyal assistant. It’s incredible how the world of basketball works.”
Blair laughs when he’s told that quote. He remembers Brase, the 12-year-old, as “a little brother to all of us.”
But, Blair said, he came to know Matt, the man, as an assistant coach with Brase’s Rio Grande Vipers from 2015-18.
“Do I see him in an (NBA) head coach role?” Blair said. “You’re damn right, I do. He was the head coach in my world. Not only that, I also see how he’s grown since he’s been in this role with the Rockets. He’s not a guy who rests on his laurels. He wants to absorb the game.”
In a way, the pandemic has been perfect for that.
So much of his role with the Rockets is about the here and now, the immediacy of two aging superstars in their primes and the never-ending title hunt. He has appreciated the ability to go back to the whiteboard.
Brase has treated this extended quiet time as an advanced course in basketball. On the syllabus? Hoops 401: Foreign Inbound Plays.
“I’ve been watching the Spanish League, the German League, anything,” he said. “You just try to pull some things out of it.”
Coaching for a team with one of the most well-defined philosophies in the league, if not in all of professional sports, Brase has been beholden to D’Antoni’s uptempo style and Morey’s double-down on data.
But Brase has been adding some arrows to his quill. Even if he insists doesn’t want them.
“I love what coach does here, so that’s my base,” Brase said. “But when you think about where the game takes you? When I first got to the Rockets as intern, I thought it was crazy, but I attributed it to the NBA. Then you find out we are the extreme outlier.
“But it makes sense to us. This is our pulse, our heartbeat.”
Now that the league is on its way back, returning with an eight-game resumption of the regular season, followed by the playoffs, Brase is back in the fold full time.
He knows the risks — Brase said the players and staff will be tested “every other day until we leave for Orlando,” and he said he’ll be able to start working with players on Monday — but, he said, “it’s better than sitting around waiting and guessing.”
He’s ready to be back on the sidelines.
Arizona’s Matt Brase left, who is the grandson of Arizona coach Lute Olson and Stanford’s Taj Finger right, struggle for control of the ball during the second half at McKale Center in Tucson, Ariz. on Saturday, Feb. 5, 2005. (AP Photo/John Miller)
He’s ready to hear that bouncing ball again, and the squeaking sneakers. The only sounds he’s ever known.
It seems there’s only one person dreading the return of NBA basketball.
If anyone has taken this extended timeout to relax, it is Jody Brase.
For the first time in decades, she doesn’t have games to watch, or to fret over.
“Ninety-nine percent of the time, you know, it’s the best job ever (for a parent’s child),” she said. “(They) get to work with great people, human beings who are so passionate and fit. It’s a joyful position. But I also think, ‘Here we go again with the pressure.’ I still can’t watch a UA game without a stomachache if we start losing.
“And now the pressure when your kid is the coach? When you remember when your dad was the coach? Sitting and watching that is very painful sometimes. You know it’s not just a game. Everyone says it’s just a game. No, it’s not. It’s their livelihood, it’s their hard work.
“It’s not just a game for Matt.”
