‘A dream come true’: Brothers Kobe and Kaleb Brown share the court for Missouri Tigers
Kobe Brown was working out with his brother, Kaleb, when he noticed something was off.
He was back home in Huntsville, Alabama following his freshman season at Missouri and they were on the basketball court with their longtime trainer Kelly McCarty and his son, Chase. After a year of playing under Tigers coach Cuonzo Martin, Kobe Brown was going through that day’s drills with a certain sense of urgency. But Kaleb wasn’t matching his intensity.
“When you get to college, you’re going to have to go hard all the time,” McCarty recalled Kobe telling his younger brother. “Everybody’s going to be good, so you’re gonna have to work extra hard.”
The Brown brothers have always shared a close bond, pushing one another to be better. Kobe wanted to help Kaleb form the right habits before he got to the next level.
But at that time, he had no idea Kaleb would end up playing for the Tigers. Yet here they are at the start of the 2021-22 season; Kobe, a junior and Mizzou’s sole returning starter, and Kaleb entering his freshman year.
“Being able to [play together] on a high level like this is like a dream come true,” Kobe said. “Growing up neither one of us were sure that we would make it to this level.”
A basketball family
Kobe and Kaleb have been around basketball their whole lives. Their father, Greg Brown, played at Athens State University and has been coaching at the high school level since before either was born.
Growing up, the brothers always accompanied their dad to his practices. Greg remembers how little they were, how they’d run between players’ legs at practices, probably too young to even understand what the game of basketball really was.
In those early years, Kobe took karate lessons. He was really good at it too, Greg recalled. “I thought I was gonna have a young Bruce Lee rather than a basketball player, so I was about to get afraid,” he said with a chuckle. “But every time after his meets he would come home and grab the ball and just kind of dribble around the house. So I knew where his heart was.”
The boys were attracted to that ball like a magnetic force. Every time the team took a break in Greg’s practices, the boys would grab a ball and challenge someone to play with them. Even if there were smaller kids in the gym, they always wanted to go up against the high schoolers.
Once they started playing more organized basketball, Kobe at 5 years old and Kaleb at age 4, they were both confused about the different rules. Their dad never let them or his players travel, so why were all the other kids allowed to hold the ball and run, they’d ask. That didn’t seem fair.
Little league recreation rules proved to be a continuous sore point. By the time Kobe was nearing the end of elementary school, his teams were blowing others out of the water, causing some complaints from parents. So, the league made a rule that if a team was up by 20 points, its leading scorer would have to sit on the bench. He hated that rule.
“We would go up 20 in maybe the first quarter, first half every game and I would just be sitting watching the game for the rest of the game,” Kobe said. “It got kind of boring.”
A competitive fire
When Kobe was in sixth grade and Kaleb was in fourth, they started working with McCarty, who opened UWin Training Facility following a 15-year pro career overseas in Israel and Russia. Greg wanted to have someone else training his sons over the summer so that he could create more separation as he tried to balance the dynamic of being both their dad and coach.
Kobe’s desire to be better was evident to McCarty from their first workout. He went hard the entire time and became frustrated if he couldn’t perform a certain move. At one point, McCarty asked Kobe to try to get to the basket with his left hand from half court in two dribbles, a maneuver he knew most sixth graders couldn’t pull off. Though Kobe struggled to execute it in their first session, he had perfected it by the time they met again two days later.
Kaleb was in fourth grade and wasn’t as serious about basketball yet, so he would often run around the gym with McCarty’s son. Though he didn’t always want to work on his game, looking back now, he’s glad his dad made him tag along.
“Coach Kelly had to deal with some hard times, me complaining when I was little about not wanting to work out,” Kaleb said. “And eventually it just became a love for it. I saw how [Kobe] developed, how he was getting better and better. And you just started wanting to work out and be better and better.”
Even as a seventh and eighth grader, McCarty remembers how Kobe guided his brother. He had an unusual coaching tendency for someone of that age, likely a byproduct of observing his dad. The brothers have always had an extremely close bond — as kids, they did everything together, no matter the age difference — and it showed on the court as they supported each other.
But they’re competitive too. They always had some sort of back and forth about which was better at a certain skill — passing remains a heated debate. McCarty likened their one-on-one battles to wild rams butting heads on an Animal Planet show. A rugby match was another comparison. On several occasions, he had to leave the brothers with the keys to lock up the gym because they were so entrenched in one of those affairs or a shooting contest of some sort.
“I think that’s just what’s special about them being brothers. They each have pushed one another to become Power Five athletes,” McCarty said. “Not everybody has that, you know, a big brother that can push him, can show him, can teach him to be what he’s striving to be. And then from the flip side, not every big brother has a little brother that really puts pressure on you to be your best every day.”
Though he made a point to stay neutral in those brotherly disputes, it’s worth noting that McCarty called Kaleb one of the best passers he’s trained, comparing him to former North Carolina star Ed Cota, whom he played with overseas. “Kaleb passes the ball like a magician,” McCarty remarked.
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A leadership role
Though many were surprised to hear that Kobe, listed at 6-foot-8, would be taking on a share of point guard duties for Mizzou this season, it made perfect sense to those close to the brothers.
Despite the fact that Kobe mostly saw time at the four spot last season, both he and Kaleb trained as point guards throughout their childhood. It wasn’t until Kobe’s last two years of high school, when he played with Kaleb at Lee High School under their father, that he saw more minutes at other positions on the floor.
Greg wanted to prepare his eldest son for the next level and thought he’d have a better shot at earning minutes in college if he could play multiple positions on both ends of the court. And it also gave Kaleb more of a chance to develop his skills leading an offense.
They thrived playing on the court at the same time, all those hours spent in the gym on full display. When he first got to college, Kobe would often tell his mother, Sheryll, that his new teammates didn’t make the passes in games he would have expected his younger brother to make. Their connection on the court was impossible to replicate.
“We’ve always had great chemistry together, a lot of highlight plays together,” Kaleb said. “I know where he’ll be, he knows where I’ll be. Yeah, it’s just fun.”
In 2018-19, Kobe, then a senior, and Kaleb, a sophomore, combined as a one-two punch against Buckhorn in the playoffs to lead the Generals to the Alabama 6A regional finals. Kaleb scored a bucket with less than 30 seconds left to tie the game after their team trailed by two, which Kobe followed with the game-tying score.
Greg wasn’t sure if the team would be able to achieve the same success once Kobe left for Mizzou, but he and Kaleb teamed up to capture his first state championship as a head coach in 2020-21. Greg takes extra pride in the fact that both of his sons received player of the year honors for their region in their respective senior seasons.
“That was really special for me,” he said. “That was kind of one of the goals of mine, to make sure that they tried to be one of the best players in the state.”
Reconnecting at Mizzou
Leading up to his freshman year, Kaleb reached out to a couple of former Mizzou point guards, including Dru Smith, who is now signed with the Miami Heat organization. An avid student of the game described by those close to him as an out of the box thinker, Kaleb wanted more insight on what it was like playing under Martin. He was eager to learn what the head coach likes and how to earn playing time in his system.
But without a doubt, the biggest aid to Kaleb’s transition to the college game has been having his brother by his side. If he doesn’t know what Martin is talking about in a practice, he’ll ask Kobe to explain it that night. If one heads to the team facility to put extra work in, the other tags along. They often share dinners too. And should a low moment come, as can often happen in one’s freshmen season, Kaleb has a built in support system there to pick him up.
“I think that I would probably have a head full of gray hair and probably not ever sleep at night if [Kaleb] was there by himself, especially eight hours away from home,” Sheryll said. “There are many times when I just have to smile to myself because I can’t believe how lucky we are that they’re both in the same place in a great school doing what they love.”
Their father echoed a similar sentiment. There is rarely a day that goes by where Greg doesn’t talk with his sons on the phone about basketball, discussing topics from the mental side of the sport to how to best approach practice.
They often tell him any mistakes they made that day and he provides a sounding board to help them improve. In recent weeks, Kaleb has been focused on reducing turnovers. As is often the case with freshmen guards, he’s had to adjust his timing and decision making on passes against college players who are bigger and faster.
The trio talk about the brothers’ goals as well. When Kaleb told his parents he wanted to commit to Missouri in August 2020, one of the reasons behind his decision was that he and Kobe wanted to try to make the NCAA Tournament on the same team. Now that playing together on this level is actually a reality, they have their sights focused on the Big Dance.
“They’re working really hard towards it,” Greg said. “It’s just a blessing to see them be able to go for that goal and do it together.”
This story was originally published November 9, 2021 at 9:32 AM.
