Role of a Lifetime

by James Brown

  All of this deliberation led to my initial conclusion that I simply hadn’t been the self-starter in college that I had been in high school. No amount of looking outside for a scapegoat to pin the blame on would provide the answers I sought—Coach Fitzsimmons, the guy I was vying with for the twelfth spot, the level of competition at Harvard—none of those deserved that tag. Instead, and as hard as it was to face at that already difficult moment in my life, the answer to what had occurred was within me. I should have—and could have—put myself in a position so that anyone looking at and evaluating my basketball skills—even Coach Fitzsimmons—would see that my abilities were at such a high level they could not have even remotely conceived of cutting me. I had not done that, and therefore, when I looked in the mirror, I knew there was no one else to blame for what had occurred but me.

  During this process of self-analysis, I also realized that my initial determination that I had been more self-motivated in high school wasn’t entirely true, either. Rather, at DeMatha High I had the blessing and privilege of playing for one of the top high school coaches—ever—who built a great deal of his success on motivating his players to become more than they were at any given point in time. He had spent a career figuring out what buttons to push and levers to pull to get every kid to play as hard as he could, and getting them to practice and prepare year-round as well as he could. He didn’t allow us to cram. Instead—in basketball and everything else we attempted to do—it became a way of life to continually work to improve. To use our God-given talents by making them even better. I couldn’t take all the credit for my work ethic in high school—Coach Wootten deserved a lot of the credit, too. What I realized now—in this moment of failure—was that I needed to learn to apply those lessons on hard work myself, throughout my life. What would I do in the future with all the gifts and abilities I had been given, when given an opportunity to use and expand them—in whatever setting? I began to see it as a responsibility that I had as the recipient of those gifts and abilities—whether basketball related or otherwise—to maximize them to their fullest, for some purpose beyond myself. I was a steward of what had been given me. I was beginning to realize that I had not been a very good one up to this point.

  I emerged from my bedroom renewed and with a fresh commitment to my future, and I vowed that I would never allow that to happen again in my life. Never again would I fail for a lack of preparation and effort over things that I could control. Never again would I fail to carry out the responsibility that was mine to make the most of what had been given me. That was a seminal moment in my life and career. I just didn’t quite know yet how it would begin to flesh itself out in the days ahead.

  A short time later, I found a job working, along with a teammate Floyd Lewis, within the District of Columbia government. Shortly thereafter, I went for an interview at IBM. Clifford Alexander, an alumnus of Harvard with whom I maintained a relationship, had followed my release from the Hawks and contacted me to tell me that he had arranged for an interview with IBM. Big Blue, with the very traditional corporate culture, including attire marked by white dress shirts and conservative clothing. I really hadn’t paid attention to things like that before, worrying about how to dress for a particular environment, and I certainly hadn’t done any homework before the interview to determine what a conservative company it is. I went over for my interview still in the mind-set of James Brown, ex-basketball player. I had an afro (I had been able to choose my own barber up in Cambridge, without Mom’s input) and thick Clyde Frazier sideburns. I was wearing a velvet blue bow tie with a powder blue shirt, all crowned by a plaid blue suit and thick-soled checkerboard shoes. It seems I deserve some credit though, as at least I left the white leather coat with fur-lined hem and collar, and matching cap hanging in my closet as I prepared for the interview.

  But did I mention that I was wearing a shoulder bag?

  The man that I was to interview with came out of his office and began speaking with his assistant. I was the only other person in the reception area.

  “Wow, James Brown, Harvard College, Harvard Speakers’ Forum, captain of the basketball team, this is an impressive candidate. Where is he?” His assistant nodded in my direction.

  “Here I is!” I announced, and leapt to my feet. (I didn’t really say that, but I think that’s the only way I could have made a worse first impression.) He brought me back into his office, sat behind his desk, and took time to instruct me.

  “Son, if I didn’t know that you were recommended by a Harvard alum of whom I think highly, I would have taken you through a perfunctory interview and bounced you out of here in a New York minute.” I was puzzled.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Why!?” His nostrils flared with exasperation. “Just look at yourself!” He then read me the riot act, informing me that my dress spoke volumes about me, and what I thought about this job opportunity, before I even opened my mouth, and that first impression alone indicated to him that I did not fit the IBM model. As a result, I now wear corporate dress when I’m in a corporate setting, down to making sure that my shoes are polished and my clothing pressed.

  I didn’t get that job.

  As a result of that experience with IBM and the mentoring I received from the interviewer, things went better when I interviewed with Xerox—I began a job with them in sales, and eventually, sales management, in January of 1974. While I was there, my ultimate superior was Jay Nussbaum, a true marketing genius. I worked seven years at Xerox, learning a great deal from Jay, and building the foundation for much of my business career that was to follow.

  After my first year there, however, I asked Jay for a leave of absence. Red Auerbach had popped back into my life again. Coach Auerbach had called and extended an invitation for me to participate in the Boston Celtics Training Camp for the 1974 season, to be held in Marshfield, Massachusetts. Jay was sympathetic to my request. He was a former athlete himself, having played football at the University of Maryland, and had hired a sales staff consisting of a number of former college athletes. His theory in hiring former athletes was his experience that most of those college athletes were competitive, self-motivating personalities and with those basic qualities they would be predisposed to success in the sales world. By and large I think he was right. Jay is one of the most inclusive executives I’ve ever seen, hiring minorities without a second thought. He was like my mom; skin color wasn’t part of the criteria for his assessment of ability and potential. Jay has been remarkably successful his entire career, having been the global head of sales and marketing for a unit of Citigroup, the head of sales and marketing for KPMG Consulting, and the number three executive at Oracle under Larry Ellison, after he finished his tenure at Xerox.

  Jay let me go to Marshfield, with a caveat.

  “I think you need to ultimately answer the question in your own mind and either pursue it fully or get it out of your system, so I think it’s important that you go.” I nodded in agreement. I believed that I needed to follow this dream at least one more time, but would prefer that I did it without burning any bridges at Xerox. “What I don’t want, however, is for this to be an annual event. Go this time and decide. See where it takes you, and determine where your lot lies. Basketball or business? Give it your best shot now, but I expect that you will not be coming back to me every year asking that you try out again.”

  I agreed. That seemed reasonable. And wise. I didn’t want to look back when I was forty or fifty and wonder what could have been if I had tried to pursue my dream, but at the same time recognized that my departure, although temporary, would be disruptive to the company. I was going to make sure that there weren’t any regrets this time.

  The Celtics held their camp on an outdoor, concrete court. They were focused on finding out if you were tough and really a team player, willing to dive for loose balls knowing that you’d be skinned up as a result. I was willing and hit the court repeatedly during Celtics camp.

  And once again, I was the last player released. Coac
h Auerbach sat down with me, and I’m sure he had a cigar somewhere that he was working on while we spoke.

  “James, you’ve got what it takes to be successful in this league. You have the talent to make it in the NBA, but you didn’t grow as a player in college. You’ve definitely got enough talent to play in the league; you just need to play against some top-flight competition to further season you.” He wanted me to consider going overseas to play, to give me a chance to play regularly against better competition and sharpen my skills and get more experience under my belt.

  The more I ruminated on it, however, the clearer my thoughts became. I realized that I wasn’t interested in coming back and barely making a team. If I was going to play professional basketball, I wanted to at least be a seventh or eighth man, one of the guys that came off the bench regularly in each game. I didn’t want to sidetrack my growing technology career to be a twelfth man, who played once a week for a few minutes, if that. I wanted to be a meaningful contributor to some team, some organization, whether that was in the NBA or on Jay Nussbaum’s team at Xerox.

  I decided that I had pursued the opportunity enough and had given it my best—despite having learned a lot about what my best would and should be in the future, but that it was time to continue to move on in a different direction with my life. I stayed focused on the tasks at hand at Xerox, and never looked back. Helping make my decision was the fact that the pay scales were similar. I was making as much at Xerox as I would have as a bottom guy on an NBA roster, which made my decision a little bit easier. I was on the path to somewhere in corporate America, I believed, and was now sure that I wouldn’t be headed for a career in basketball.

  About that time, I began my spiritual search by sampling a number of churches. Unfortunately, I wasn’t being impacted beyond whatever I may have received in that hour. I still hadn’t figured out exactly how to make my faith personal, and real. Obviously seeds were being planted, though, as I have a vivid recollection of driving home from a training session with Xerox about forty miles outside of DC, driving around in my little green Corvette. It was 1974, I was doing well, making great money at a huge company… but there was an emptiness that I felt. At that moment, for reasons I still don’t understand, my soul was pricked. I realized that I had participated in the hedonistic pursuits of partying and engaging with others in regular happy hours, and hanging out at bars. I wasn’t much of a drinker—I could only handle sweet drinks, things that tasted like Kool-Aid. But I realized that I hadn’t been true to who I was, who my parents had raised me to be, and, most importantly, who God had created me to be.

  And so, on a deserted road heading toward my apartment, I found myself beginning to pray. “God, I don’t like this. I don’t like who I am and what I’m doing. If You’ll come into my life, I’ll give my life to You and begin to follow You as best as I can.” In that moment, I immediately felt as if a burden had been lifted from me, and felt a peace come over me, and emptiness filled.

  Soon thereafter I was invited to a party and was hanging out with the guys, not doing anything awful, but behaving in a way that I felt was contrary to the commitment I had made on that deserted road to follow Christ—to make Him the Lord of my life. I felt like a traitor. I cried out again, asking for forgiveness and help. I left the party. For me, those series of events marked the beginning of my journey to follow Him as a committed believer.

  Thereafter, I began to realize that my work ethic, doing the right things, my talent, education, skill, and whatever intelligence I had were only some of the elements of who I was and what I could bring to bear upon each day of my life to begin to live a successful life. I began to also see the importance of rising above the usual ways of climbing the corporate ladder that seemed to be at the expense of, or causing harm to, someone else. Seeing things that were done to climb the ladders of corporate success through the years made me vow that I would never do those things or take those shortcuts. I began to understand the difference between living a significant life, a life of real meaning that lifts others up, and a successful life, one too often defined by our society in terms of things and power and achievements. I began to see co-workers not as competitors, but as allies and friends together in the midst of a cause greater than ourselves. I began to see the strains my superiors were under and as a result was able to do more to support their efforts so that they could be successful.

  I began to accept more and more the responsibility for all I had been given. I began to be a better steward of all the gifts and opportunities that God had given me. I was beginning to build the foundations for the life that I was meant to live.

  I began trying to find a church that would be the right place for me to worship. I bounced around for a while, but the odyssey ended when I attended and finally was planted at Rhema Christian Center Church. It’s a Bible teaching church, and Clarence Givens, the bishop of the church when I arrived, provided the teaching of scripture for our congregation. It was almost like being in grad school for me, with the opportunity to dig deeply into God’s Word, much like I had done with the various subjects in my classes at Harvard.

  During my third year at Xerox, my father died. He developed pancreatic cancer in 1977 and died after a short illness at the age of 46. My sister had just graduated from Emerson College, and my father was so pleased that he was able to see her graduate. As president of the senior class, she spoke at the commencement and has always looked back with a warm gratitude that she had the opportunity to thank my parents from the podium, in public, for all the sacrifices they made to put her through school. At that moment, she spoke for all of us. One final thing: while in the hospital my father asked to be baptized. It made that day that he left us so much more bearable because we could take comfort in knowing that he is spending eternity in Heaven.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE FOUNDATION DETERMINES THE HEIGHT

  Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock.

  Jesus, in Matthew 7:24 (KJV)

  Everything that we want to have happen isn’t going to necessarily happen, and if it does, it doesn’t necessarily happen right away.

  In the meantime, build the foundation.

  I certainly found it to be true in basketball, both in my successes and my shortcomings. The times when I had laid a proper and solid foundation, I was able to achieve more of what I had set out to achieve. When I tried a shortcut around laying a proper foundation of fundamentals, I wasn’t able to reach the same heights. I was also discovering the same in my faith; going deeper in Christ must come before we can grow higher with Christ.

  Depth before height.

  I heard a sermon on that topic when I was working at FOX Sports in Los Angeles. It was a powerful sermon delivered by Bishop Charles Blake of West Angeles Church of God in Christ. I realized that’s what Coach Wootten had been talking about for all of those years, just in a different lexicon. That’s what happened to me in college—I hadn’t spent the time to prepare my basketball foundation sufficiently to support me as I tried to move on to play at the NBA level. As I tried to go higher, the support—the foundations—simply weren’t there to achieve the career that had been the focus of my dreams. Once the foundation is set, whatever it is, the ultimate destination, the ultimate height—more or less—is determined. It won’t go any higher or further than whatever the foundation will support. The superstructure you are attempting to build is determined by that portion that you can’t see—that underground foundation.

  Let me be very clear right now, before we go any further, as to what I mean by “depth” and “height.” “Depth,” of course refers to the foundation we build or need to build that will undergird everything in our lives. That foundation includes our faith, our character, integrity, and honesty, living a life marked by humility and stewardship—recognizing that everything we have comes from our Creator and everything we are is the way He created us.

  Our foundation reflects
a proper understanding of, and a committed focus to, the most important priorities in our life—faith, family, and friends.

  The depth in our lives—the strength of our foundations—is marked by courage. The courage not only to pick yourself up when you fail or fall and move on, but to step out, anxiously at times, from your comfort zones. And probably most importantly, to embrace the courage that causes you to continually look at yourself in the mirror—to see who you are—and to change what you need to change.

  As to “height,” let me tell you first what I don’t mean. Height has nothing to do with trophies, résumés, and awards. It is not a scholarship to Harvard University. Height has nothing to do with the amount of money you make, the number of cars you have, the house you live in, or the size of your investment portfolio. It has nothing to do with positions or titles or the number of people you supervise. Those are all the measurements of a society that ascribes success to climbing ladders, and in terms of the acquisition of things, achievements, and power.

  Some of those things may occur along the way, but they are not the objective of what I mean by “height.”

  Instead, “height” is very simply striving to become all you were created to be. It involves maximizing your God-given gifts and abilities, finding those things you are passionate about and pursuing them, recognizing the opportunities you have each day to add value to the lives around you, and to make a difference in your world. It is demonstrated in the number of times you picked yourself up after you failed or fell. It is reflected in a life that recognizes the platforms for positive influence you have been given and the opportunities we each have as role models to change just one life.