- 3 months ago
Sure, he's not to blame, but that was still a stupid pass
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Twitter: AJMckenzie94847
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Twitter: AJMckenzie94847
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00:26Hi, everybody.
00:29I'm Brian Kenney, and welcome to ESPN Classics' Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame, a series
00:34that takes a fresh look at sports personalities who offered largely for their mistakes, controversial
00:38moments, or questionable decisions.
00:4163, 62, 13, 12.
00:45With seconds left in the 1982 NCAA championship game, Georgetown trailed North Carolina by
00:51a single point.
00:53The Hoyas had the ball with a chance to take the lead when their point guard, Fred Brown,
00:56mistakenly threw the ball to Carolina forward James Worthy.
01:00The Tar Heels went on to win the game, and Brown was labeled as the game's goat.
01:05In this show, we'll count down the top five reasons you can't blame Fred Brown for losing
01:09the 1982 NCAA championship game.
01:12It remains one of the most replayed moments in American sports.
01:15But before we get to our countdown, let's take a look at what happened on that fateful night
01:19at the Louisiana Superdome.
01:23Here at the Louisiana Superdome, they're going to be playing before crowds of over 60,000.
01:27Those are the biggest crowds to ever watch a basketball game in the United States.
01:32This was the first Final Four where people didn't care how bad the seat was.
01:37They just wanted to say, I was there.
01:41The popularity of college basketball, especially March Madness, was raging coast to coast.
01:47In the final, it was jammed when No. 1 North Carolina defeated Houston and Georgetown beat
01:53Louisville.
01:53Ewing, put it in.
01:55What do you do against that?
01:57You have the two finest teams in the country, and it should be an outstanding basketball game.
02:02This was Georgetown's first experience in the Final Four, also.
02:07So, Carolina was accustomed to probably more big game situations.
02:16We had James Worthy and Sam Perkins, who are arguably two of the best big men to play college
02:24basketball.
02:25Oh, Perkins!
02:27Oh, Sam, baby!
02:28And then we had Michael, who was a freshman, who eventually started for that team.
02:34This kid's a superstar.
02:35He's going to get away with it.
02:36So, you're talking about three of the best players in college history.
02:43Then, of course, there was John Thompson and the start of Hoya Paranoia and the fact that
02:48teams were intimidated.
02:49Patrick Ewing was just a wonderful, wonderful defensive player.
02:55Knocked away by Ewing!
02:57John could extend the court with his little foot soldiers, knowing that Patrick was back
03:02there to swat anything aside that penetrated the lane.
03:06Pass to Ewing!
03:08Oh, my God!
03:10And you've got a guy, a point guard named Fred Brown, who at the time might have been the
03:16best total basketball player on Georgetown.
03:19Brown puts it up and in, and it is good, and he's fouled!
03:25A sophomore, Brown helped lead Georgetown to a 30-6 record going into the final against
03:3131-2 North Carolina.
03:33The game lived up to expectations, as John Thompson's special forces battled Dean Smith's
03:39elite talent down to the wire.
03:48It was an incredible basketball game.
03:51That was another night where nobody lost.
03:54Brown feeds away to Ewing!
03:55Ewing for the dunk!
03:57Neither team was able to advantage during the game.
04:03The pace is just absolutely furious.
04:06You just have the feeling this one's going to the wire.
04:08So it was who was going to have the ball last.
04:11Here's Floyd, off balance!
04:13It's good!
04:14With just under a minute left, Eric's sleepy Floyd threaded heavy traffic to give the Hoyas
04:19a 62-61 lead.
04:21Smith called timeout with 32 seconds remaining.
04:25He kind of looked at Michael and said, you know, I think you're going to get a, you know,
04:28you're going to take the shot over here, you know, because he knew they were going
04:30to collapse, and it happened, you know, just almost exactly like he said it.
04:37Jordan, yep, he's letting it go.
04:39Good!
04:39From 15 feet!
04:40When he took the shot, no one was amazed that he made it, and we were now waiting for
04:46the next great play.
04:51We tried to come down before they got set up to get ourselves in a position where we could
04:56score.
04:58Georgetown had plenty of time to come down.
05:00Fred Brown at point.
05:02Sleepy Floyd sinking, sinking toward the baseline on his right, getting his feet together.
05:08Patrick Ewing in the hole.
05:10Eric Floyd, that's who we would go to as our score.
05:14That would have been our primary objective.
05:17They knew they had to keep the ball out of Sleepy's hands or keep the ball out of Patrick's
05:22hands.
05:23Georgetown with one timeout.
05:25Fred Brown looking.
05:28Fred Brown comes down.
05:30When he looks over, James Worthy shoots the gap.
05:34Now the defense is out of balance.
05:37Now it's five on four because Worthy's out of position.
05:41He's so badly out of position on defense for this play that Brown actually thinks he's an
05:46offensive player.
05:47The place where Worthy is standing on the court, only an offensive player could be standing
05:52there.
05:53He turned away to look again to see if the wing was open.
05:58He just turned and just threw the ball without really even looking.
06:21When Fred Brown threw the ball away and it was sort of that suspended moment of what just
06:26happened here.
06:29There was a sense of disbelief.
06:30It's just mind boggling that somehow this pass is just thrown into an opponent's arms.
06:39I felt terrible.
06:41You know, this is what you work hard for all your life to actually win the championship.
06:51If he made that mistake in the first quarter, no one would have said anything.
06:56Unfortunately, the mistake came at a crucial point of the game.
07:00Fred Brown probably had one of the biggest goofs in the biggest game of all time.
07:04To this day, people still look at that and they think that maybe Brown costs him the championship.
07:09He's not going to live it down.
07:10And it will live forever.
07:21In a tight game like the 1982 championship, every small factor becomes critical to the
07:26outcome.
07:26Many of these factors frame our defense of Fred Brown.
07:29So before we start our countdown of the five reasons you can't blame Brown for Georgetown's
07:33loss, here are a few points that did not make the short list.
07:36We call them the best of the rest.
07:40James Madison, the little-known school from Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, trailed North
07:46Carolina in the second round by a point with a minute and a half left.
07:51If you're a James Madison fan, this is precisely where you want to be.
07:56After James Madison missed two jumpers and made two turnovers, the Tar Heels escaped elimination
08:0252-50.
08:04Oh boy, you're talking about a scare.
08:06They played very, very well, and we were very fortunate to beat them.
08:11They had a chance, but that's really bad when you get that close to pulling upset.
08:18It took a James-worthy basket, a layup, in the final seconds of that game to actually
08:24secure the win.
08:28They survived, you know, but a basket here, a basket there, the Fred Brown thing never
08:33happens.
08:37Our final best of the rest, Dean's time.
08:40Only the year before, Smith's Tar Heels had lost their third national championship game
08:46under his watch.
08:49He always had one of the best four or five rosters in the country, and he just couldn't
08:56ever seem to get over the hump.
09:001977, that team made this inspirational run to the national final, only to lose to Marquette.
09:0881 represented a great opportunity to do that.
09:11The Tar Heels couldn't get it done.
09:14It wasn't our time.
09:15The coaches particularly thought Carolina would just have to get lucky, because you keep knocking
09:19on that door, you're eventually going to knock the door down.
09:22Jordan jumper from out on the left.
09:24Good!
09:24And it's intercepted by Worth.
09:26Oh, Dean Smith.
09:27They're doing it for him.
09:28Freddie Brown's mistake was the break that North Carolina got at that time that gave him
09:35the win.
09:35And Coach Smith, that game had lucky breaks, where in other games, the other things happened
09:41against him, and he wasn't able to advance or to win that final game.
09:45Fred Brown can't be blamed for the fact that North Carolina was as good as North Carolina
09:49was that year.
09:50It made it best to just spend the night that they were going to win a national championship.
09:58Patrick Ewing, eager to impress, the seven-foot freshman's aggressive defense backfired.
10:05Worthy again, he spins and fires.
10:07It'll be goals ending against Joy.
10:09Here was this bird of prey just swooping out of the sky, just knocking one shot after another.
10:19And that'll be another goals ending call against Joy.
10:22Every basket that North Carolina has, all four field goals on goals ending call.
10:27Georgetown wanted to establish itself as the intimidating, dominant team.
10:34And they were so over-psyched up that Patrick Ewing in that game got five goaltending calls.
10:41Worthy pride to tie, rejected Ewing, that's his fifth goaltending call.
10:47That's ten points.
10:48That's an astonishing number, an astonishing number.
10:52Two of these are very effective, but now we're reaching the point where you're just giving
10:57away too many points.
10:59Ewing is going up, covering that basket, and he's a young fella, can really jump, but he
11:04is goaltending.
11:05I was angry.
11:07One or two maybe, it might have been goaltending, they were close.
11:10But the rest, I didn't think, were.
11:14He could have goaltended 40 shots that night.
11:17And the quality of player that North Carolina had was going to keep going at him and keep
11:22taking free two-pointers.
11:24The best car you'll often might appear to be to just throw it up and let Ewing catch it.
11:27The car you'll get an automatic two.
11:29You can absolutely blame Patrick Ewing for going out and thinking that he was going to
11:33intimidate Sam Perkins, James Worthy, and Michael Jordan.
11:38Those calls allowed them to stay close until they found their rhythm.
11:43Out front on Floyd.
11:44Here comes Jordan down.
11:45Lay him off the glass.
11:46It's good.
11:47They could have won that game had Patrick not done that.
11:50So the whole team had this kind of overwrought, frenetic energy in the game.
11:56And the fact that Fred Brown was subject to it late in the game, you just can't blame
12:01one play for them.
12:06That brings us to reason number four.
12:09John Thompson.
12:11Critical points in the game made Georgetown's struggle more difficult.
12:15One such decision, enabling Ewing's shot blocking errors.
12:20We later learned that John Thompson had instructed Ewing
12:24to take the goaltending in an effort to try and intimidate the targets.
12:29It didn't work.
12:31At a certain point, maybe you have to take Patrick Ewing aside and say,
12:36hey, let's get this in place.
12:39You can blame John Thompson for that because he told Ewing to block it.
12:44In a sense, Fred Brown didn't lose it.
12:47It was more like John Thompson losing that game.
12:49I think some of the goaltending was an interpretation of the officials.
12:53I didn't know Sam Perkins became a roster man in his 40s, but hey.
13:05After Brown's turnover with seven seconds left, Thompson made another pivotal choice
13:10when James Worthy was fouled with two seconds to go.
13:14He used his last timeout before Worthy, who had converted only two of five free throws,
13:20missed twice.
13:21He could have used it after Worthy missed the second of his free throws.
13:25Could have set something up and worked for a little better shot than Sleepy Floyd ended up with.
13:32You've got to let your team know, well, if he misses these two shots, this is what we do.
13:37We've seen so many plays in basketball that show that even with a half a second,
13:42you can get off a decent shot.
13:44Looking inbound, loops a far up court for George, who catches it, turns around, shoots,
13:48and he's got it, he hit it, he hit the shot, and the Huskies have won it.
13:55Sykes, long pass, Bill Jenkins throws three for the win.
13:59Goal!
13:59Oh, boy!
14:01Goal!
14:02About the win!
14:03Throw at the left of the floor, Leitner catches, comes down, dribble, shoots, goal!
14:11The result could have been different.
14:13We had those plays, but we hadn't designed that specific play.
14:18He takes a little criticism because of where he called a timeout, you know,
14:22maybe if he hadn't called it and waited and set up a play.
14:26In hindsight, since I know what happened, great, I would want to take a timeout.
14:35Michael Jordan.
14:36He was the difference at both ends of the floor.
14:39With North Carolina down by a point with 32 seconds left,
14:43the team set their strategies during a timeout.
14:46The only thing I knew we'd have is the short jump shot,
14:49and after we went through it, as Michael walked down, I said,
14:53if it comes to you knocking in.
14:56We weren't worried about Jordan.
14:58We were only worried about James Worthy and Sam Perkins.
15:01Realistically, someone taking an 18-foot, 20-foot jumper,
15:05you have to live with that.
15:08I saw Worthy going down the lane, and so I collapsed into him,
15:14and I think it was their point guard, Black,
15:17that threw the skip pass over there to Jordan.
15:19Goes back to Michael Jordan, jumper from out on the left, good!
15:2363-62!
15:26It's hard to view Jordan in that context now because of what he became,
15:32but here he was, a freshman, taking the biggest shot of the game
15:36and calmly knocking it down.
15:40Oh, he made the biggest shot in a winner go home seven years later.
15:48And then in the finals nine years after that, he made a last-second shot.
15:56Just as critical to his team's success was Jordan's vigilance on defense moments after draining his jump shot.
16:03Fred Brown has got the ball here, and Sleepy Floyd's on the baseline,
16:08and he's getting ready to give him a chess pass.
16:11When suddenly, Carolina defender, standing just inside the foul circle on the left side,
16:16takes one step to his left, and blocks Brown's passing line.
16:22Michael Jordan.
16:24Jordan did a fabulous job in, you know, jumping off his man into that lane.
16:30So he did more than just make the shot to win the game.
16:33He also probably made the defensive play to win the game as well.
16:39That brings us to reason number two, James Worthy.
16:42The Final Four's most outstanding player answered the call by exploiting Georgetown's aggressive defense.
16:49Worthy on board for the dunk.
16:52Worthy crashing down and getting to the glass for one-handed slams is something I'll never forget.
16:58Jordy out on the right side. No good.
17:00Hands up by Worthy.
17:01James Worthy was eating our lunch, and he had the poise.
17:06I think he made the difference.
17:08Worthy turns around forward.
17:10Worthy was the guy that we were looking to stop him in.
17:12I don't know that we did a good job, but I guarded him a little bit, or you could call
17:16it guarding him.
17:16Jordy away to Worthy for the dunk.
17:18Worthy is having a spectacular final game.
17:2113 out of 17 from the floor, 28 points.
17:24When we threw the ball inside to James, everybody on our team was gaining more confidence and more strength
17:29because every time we threw it to James, something good happened.
17:33We are seeing one of the greatest Carolina performances by a player, win or lose, by James Worthy I've ever
17:38witnessed.
17:45Georgetown was losing.
17:47Down by a point with seven seconds left, the Hoyas were in desperate straits.
17:52Georgetown was trailing, and that's of huge significance.
17:56It didn't mean they were going to win.
17:59It meant they had the opportunity to win.
18:04Being down one with ten seconds to go was something that the 1982 Hoyas did not experience a lot.
18:11With the clock ticking down to presume they'd score, to me, that is a huge assumption to be making.
18:20Who's to know what's going to happen next?
18:21I mean, Brown might have tossed the ball to somebody who could have thrown up an air ball.
18:29Georgetown had been involved in two previous one-point games that season.
18:33In each case, the Hoyas lost because they failed to execute their offense in the late stages,
18:39going four minutes without a field goal in one and ten minutes in the other.
18:43Their aggressive defense caused turnovers, and they got to go two-on-ones and three-on-twos.
18:50When they had to bring the ball 90 feet, they played a deliberate style on offense.
18:56And to hurry up and get a shot, that isn't how they normally played.
19:00There's no guarantee that a Georgetown team that historically never shot particularly well
19:07was going to get off a decent shot in seven seconds.
19:12We can't blame Fred Brown for Georgetown losing the 82 game because we don't know what was going to happen
19:16if Fred Brown didn't throw the ball to James Worthy.
19:19Things that happen early in the game can have as much of an impact on the game
19:23as the things that happen at the end of the game.
19:25But anybody who tries to put all the blame for them losing that game on one bad pass
19:30is really sorely, sorely misguided.
19:37The previous season, Fred Brown tipped in a shot at the end of overtime to beat Seton Hall by a
19:41point.
19:42I don't take credit for that, Brown said at the time.
19:44Following the North Carolina game, Brown's teammates tried to remind him of his own philosophy,
19:49not taking too much credit or too much blame.
19:51I'm Brian Kenney, thanks for watching.
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