Return 2 Sender

After an injury derailed his NBA dash, Dee Brown limped back to Illinois a broken man. Can he find his mojo again?

The face of Illinois basketball is filthy.

On a sweltering August afternoon, Dee Brown hunches over an exercise bike on the sideline of the practice court at the Ubben Basketball Complex. His headband, long past its saturation point, drips sweat onto the hardwood; the corners of his mouth spill over with froth. Just as he catches his breath, his trainer adjusts the bike to maximum resistance for another one-minute sprint. Wonderful. Brown's parenthetic cheeks, sun-splotched from a summer spent rehabbing in a Champaign pool, rise in anguish.

Out on the court, his teammates slug through an ugly three-on-three scrimmage. Senior forward James Augustine, the only other returning starter from last season's national runner-up squad, needles the freshmen and benchwarmers, bumping them on each attempted cut. It's killing Brown not to be in on the action, knowing he could show the new crew how to beat the big man. But he has a tender foot, and his doctors say no running for another 13 days. So it's back to the butt-numbing bike.

Brown has seen way better days than this one. Take, for instance, anytime he took the court last season as the charismatic junior front man for the top-ranked Illini. Or those afternoons when Brown, Luther Head and Deron Williams would giggle their way through autograph sessions at the Urbana Holiday Inn. Or that night in early June, when Brown schlepped across a nightclub in hometown Chicago to stammer an introduction to his favorite rapper, and Young Jeezy interrupted to say he'd watched Dee all year.

And then, with a silent snap, Brown's prosperous run came to a halt. The way he had plotted it, June's predraft camp in Chi-City was going to be his busting-out party, when he would prove Illini coach Bruce Weber wrong by playing his way into the NBA alongside Williams and Head. But before Brown had even started breathing hard, one wrong step left him with a broken foot, and he had no choice but to limp back to school.

He has counted off every mind-melting, repetition-laden day since. He'll continue counting until he gets all the way up to 128: Midnight Madness tip-off. That's when his calendar flips over again, and he starts day one of the long road back onto the NBA's radar.

He knows the months that follow won't always be easy. He'll have to face up to a program with lowered expectations, led by the man who doubted him. But he's determined to make the best out of a bad break-and to look like he's having fun.

THE FOOTWORK'S almost there. Under the fluorescent lights of the mail room in Illinois' sports information office, Brown (sporting Head's old No. 4 jersey) nimbly sidesteps the stacks of outgoing manila envelopes and empty mail cartons en route to the postal scale. It's only the third day of his semester-long internship here, which marks the last credit hours he needs to complete his sports management degree. And although he's only sorta kinda sure of how the scale works, he manages to figure out the proper rate for the few packages he's sending.

A few moments later, a middle-aged secretary walks into the mail room, wearing a look of determination.

"What's up with ya?" Brown says with a lilt.

She looks up, and does a double-take. "Oh, Dee [giggle], hey [giggle]," she says. "The delivery men are going to get quite a surprise today."

Brown smiles. This is not where he expected to be either, after a dizzying Final Four run. Even though he'd heard whispers that scouts questioned his skills at the point, not to mention his size (six feet, 180), there wasn't much left for him to accomplish after winning Big Ten Player of the Year behind 50% shooting, 13.3 ppg and 4.5 apg.

More than that, though, Brown wanted to keep up with Head and Williams. The trio were as coordinated off the court as they were on it: "I know I'm going to be successful." So player and coach settled back into their business-nothingpersonal routine. Asked if the two ever talked about their predraft discord, Weber says, "No, never. I haven't had a second thought about it. I'm going to coach him the same way." Which is fine with Brown. "One-on-one basketball-wise, it's wonderful," he says. "There ain't really no beef."

Brown didn't exactly plug back into the team overnight. Sometimes the coaching staff had to send out an APB to get him to drop by Ubben. But as he counted off the days postinjury, he started to feel the pull of the team's rhythms. And soon enough, after trading in his cast for a walking boot in late July, he became a regular at those pickup games, loudly jawing at the rookies and role players. The old Dee was coming back.

"When he's up and getting after guys," says assistant coach Wayne McClain, "the competition is better. As he goes, we go."

ON A GOLDEN Saturday afternoon in late August, Brown steers his Mazda into the gravel parking lot at Ubben. After he gets out, he makes his way to the empty practice court with just the slightest of limps. He's allotted two hours today for shooting and stationary dribbling; his return to full-on hoops in late September is drawing tantalizingly close. "I can't afford to be down anymore," he says. "I always have to be smiling, because I had too many days this summer where I never smiled all day."

Brown harbors no illusions. The Illini aren't going to storm out of the gate with 29 straight wins like last year's team did, as the young faces will surely struggle to keep up in Weber's swirling motion offense. And though Brown has bonded with that stationary bike, he'll need a few weeks to get back into playing shape.

Still, he's starting to come around to the possibility that his foot injury wasn't such a horrible twist of fate after all. He's relishing his role as big brother to the freshmen. "I told them I need them," he says. Meanwhile, he and Weber are already trading personnel reports on the new faces.

Brown knows he now has the opportunity to prove to scouts he can elevate a green squad. "I'm grinding, doing what people do to survive," he says. "If I don't, I might not be in the league. I know that."

Back at Ubben, Brown is finding joy in the grind. He methodically ticks through his stationary shooting drills for about 45 minutes, then begins injecting a miniature cut into his routine, each time ending with an artful wrist pop that puts ball on net. As he ranges farther and farther back from the three-point line, his sneaker squeaks and two-dribble thunk become their own rhythm. When that bass line is broken with two misses past the left wing, he pulls back another step and lets fly with an even longer try.

The ball rips through the net. Brown is grinning ear to ear.

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