Washington Wizards head coach Scott Brooks is currently battling through a tumultuous season, one in which his 6-11 Wizards are expected to play without the services of superstar and franchise cornerstone John Wall. It's Brooks' 10th season as a head coach in the NBA, but these are far from the biggest difficulties that he has faced on the path to where he is now. As relayed to Fred Katz of The Athletic, Brooks has had to face many of those challenges head-on, including schoolyard bullies:
“You’ve got work to do. You’re not gonna let this guy bully you around ever again,” Brooks' mother told him after he came home from a seventh-grade scrap. She pulled him up to the front door of the bully's house and directed him to, “Go.”
After having gone undrafted in the 1987 NBA Draft out of the University of California-Irvine, Brooks had to claw his way onto the Philadelphia 76ers' roster for the 1988-89 season. From there, he managed to remain on a roster for 10 consecutive years, serving primarily as a backup point guard that saw sparing minutes; he started seven career games, six of which came during his rookie campaign with the 76ers.
The tenaciousness developed at a young age by the help of his mother has molded Brooks into a coach who has come as close to the NBA Finals after the Oklahoma City Thunder were defeated by the Miami Heat in the 2012 NBA Finals. After having been inducted into the UC Irvine Hall of Fame in 2001, Brooks had his number retired by the school Saturday, with a lot of the credit circling back to his mom.
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