Knights School

The collision that sent waves of pain jolting through Ernest Brown's body was more of a nudge, the kind of physical contact an elephant might experience when a bird lands on its butt. At 7 feet and 255 pounds, Brown is not easily mistaken for an elephant. But on the basketball court, he is a natural force, a potentially immovable object. Brown's triangular frame -- a generous wingspan tapering to slender hips, a pair of taut reeds for legs, and catcher's mitts for hands -- makes him ideally suited for the sport at the highest level.

But at just 21, Brown has a body that won't fully cooperate with him. The moment on December 3 when his left shoulder popped out and back into place was proof enough.

It was the third day of practice for the Kansas City Knights, a new team in an upstart professional basketball league called the ABA 2000. Brown, once a prized but controversial recruit for Iowa State University, went after a loose ball at the Penn Valley Community College gym, the Knights' practice site. Playing timid since the start of training camp in an effort to protect the previously injured shoulder, Brown made a halfhearted lunge at the loose ball and doubled over in distress the instant another player grazed him.

Brown let out a wail, several of them, and clutched his shoulder as if he had been swatted with a nail-studded 2-by-4. He held his left arm to support the shoulder and hunched off the court. He was finished for that day. And the next. He sat on the sideline with an ice pack to soothe the stretched ligaments that had been damaged during summer workouts in Los Angeles. The injury was keeping him from going full tilt, the way a player should perform when his job is on the line.

This was the inauspicious beginning of Ernest Brown's tryout with the Kansas City Knights.

In June, Brown was a second-round draft choice of the National Basketball Association's Miami Heat. But coach Pat Riley told the rookie he needed more time to develop his skills and his body: Brown would have to get his size-17 feet wet playing in a pro atmosphere, either overseas or in one of several stateside leagues. Some talent scouts believed Brown would have been smarter playing in the Big 12 for a couple of years against such rivals as the University of Kansas, Kansas State University, and the University of Missouri instead of trying to jump immediately into the NBA right out of Indian Hills Community College in Ottumwa, Iowa.

Just as Brown was trying to decide where to go until the Heat or some other NBA franchise called his agent, the ABA 2000 came along. Promoting itself as a return to the old ABA, made famous by Julius "Dr. J" Erving, the league has pulled the red-white-and-blue basketball out of mothballs and promised to give fans an affordable "alternative" to the NBA.

The Knights are scheduled to open their season the day after Christmas on the road against the Memphis Houn' Dogs. The team's first home game is against Memphis the following night at Kemper Arena.

Brown has joined a cadre of former KU players -- Knights head coach Kevin Pritchard among them -- in another attempt to see whether a pro basketball franchise can succeed in the same town responsible for losing the NBA's Kings to far-flung Sacramento, California, 15 years ago.

Kansas City has long been enamored of college hoops, and in an apparent move to appeal to that fanbase, the Knights signed onetime Jayhawks Rex Walters, Darrin Hancock, Ryan Robertson, and Nick Bradford, who joined former local high school stars Derek Hood and JaRon Rush and the likes of ex-NBA point guards Haywood Workman and Anthony Goldwire.

Brown signed with the Knights after a three-game tour with a newly formed competitive squad of the Harlem Globetrotters, who played no-nonsense college exhibitions against Denver's Metro State College, Purdue University, and defending NCAA champion Michigan State University last month. Brown didn't play much in the game against the MSU Spartans on November 13, when the contest went into the history books as the Globetrotters' first loss after 1,270 straight wins; his shoulder kept him on the bench for most of the game, and he notched just one basket. A few days later, Brown was off to Kansas City to join a totally unknown franchise preparing to get off the ground. He thought about staying with the Globetrotters.

"Nobody has heard of this team," Brown says of the Knights. "You have to look on the Internet to find it."

After the whistle blew to start the team's first practice on the morning of December 1, the Knights were going to find out just how good Ernest Brown could be.

"Ernest, I'm talking!" coach Pritchard yelled during a break in the action. It was 11:47 a.m., just under two hours into practice, and Brown had become the first player in Pritchard's coaching career to draw his ire for not paying attention. "When I'm talking, listen to me."

Later, Brown asked Pritchard about a play the team was running, so it seemed the young center-forward was genuinely interested in listening to what Pritchard had to offer. But at the next day's practice, a familiar pattern of dialogue developed between Brown and Pritchard. Brown missed a shot or forgot to make a cut. Pritchard yelled at him. Brown lagged behind in the wind sprints. Pritchard yelled at him. Pretty soon, it sounded as if Pritchard had given Ernest Brown a new first name -- Hustle Up. As in "Hustle Up, Ernest!"