The summer between his eighth and ninth grade year, Dane Brown went with the Grand Island varsity basketball team to a summer tournament.
A rail-thin 5-foot-8, Brown was there to get his feet wet, and gain experience with the varsity team. But how he did at the tournament did not matter as much as the experience he gained.
However, early in his first appearance, he had a moment that opened his eyes to what it is like to play varsity basketball. It was a moment that tested his love for the sport.
“The very first play, he gets the ball and a kid literally runs him over,” Grand Island head coach Chris Simpson said. “He’s like 70 pounds, he’s got this probably 180-200-pound kid from Buffalo run him over. … I actually called a timeout and said, ‘Hey don’t worry about it. … Everybody gets knocked down once in a while but these will be your first varsity points.’ … He went up and knocked two free throws down.”
The moment worked in his favor. It showed him he belonged. He knew after he left the charity stripe that he could play with the older kids.
He had arrived with a toughness that is still present today.
The tenacity he showed at that moment has been one of the calling cards of Brown’s game throughout his career. He had to fight and develop his game. He knew then that he had to get up when he got knocked down and use his skills to his advantage.
“It showed me that no matter who I’m playing, I could always compete, no matter if they’re bigger, stronger, older as they were at that time,” Brown said. “I could always compete and it just made me more comfortable.”
Brown has taken that lesson and applied it on the floor. Now 6-7 and 175 pounds, he is currently 41 points away from being the seventh Grand Island player to reach 1,000 career points.
During his career, Brown has steadily progressed each season, going from averaging 8.2 points per game as an eighth-grader to 16 as a sophomore last year. This season, he is averaging 24.8 points, 6.8 rebounds, 2.3 steals and 1.4 blocks per game.
Brown ranks eighth in Section VI in scoring and it is the third-most among all 11th-graders in the section. Since Jayce Wylke graduated in the spring and took his 21.2 points per game with him, Brown has become the go-to scorer for the Niagara Frontier League-leading 11-1 Vikings, who are searching for their first back-to-back league titles in program history.
When things might not be going very well for the Vikings, they look to Brown for more than just scoring or getting a stop. They look at him and how he is dealing with adversity.
When they look at him they see a kid that does not get flustered. Whether he is struggling shooting or can not miss, he is the same player. It is one of the reasons he has become his team’s go-to scorer this year.
“He’s meant everything to our team,” Simpson said. “He does a little bit of everything. He obviously scores and shoots the three well. He gets inside and goes to the basket and he’s our big guy. So he’s around the basket trying to contest and if anybody gets beat or something happens in transition, he’s the guy to go up and block or contest a shot.”
Basketball runs in Brown’s blood, taking after his father, Darren, who played for Niagara University from 1987-1991. Darren, a 6-foot-8 forward, averaged 6.7 points and 4.6 rebounds in 91 games for the Purple Eagles, including 10.1 points and 6.1 rebounds as a senior.
A graduate of Williamsville North, Darren is a retired accountant. His work with Dane has mostly been behind the scenes, but it has made an impact on the fourth-year player.
“I give him suggestions,” Darren said. “We talk after games, after practices — talk about things that he did well and things that he needs to work on and continue to work on. Then trying to guide him to get him training from other coaches and to guide him to get to the different showcases and the different travel teams that will help him grow as a player.”
Dane’s game is not like his dad’s. A shooter by trade, Dane has made 146 3-pointers during his high school career — including 37 this year — while Darren only attempted eight during his time at Niagara.
The difference in Dane’s and Darren’s games can be boiled down to how tall they were when they started playing. Dane started playing the sport in fourth grade and was not very tall for his age which led him to being trained more as a guard.
As he has gotten taller, Dane’s shot has become an advantage. No matter who is guarding him, Dane can get a clean look, as evidenced in his 49.8% career shooting from 3-point range.
“In addition to being tall, he’s still growing,” Darren said. “His shot release is high above his head too. So not only is he tall for a guard, he releases the ball when he shoots above his head. So that gives him an advantage in addition to being tall.”
Over the last two seasons, Brown has become more than a shooter. During his first two varsity seasons, 56.4% of Brown’s shots came from beyond the 3-point line, but that number has dropped to 37.6% over the last two.
He’s also getting easier points by getting to the free-throw line. In the last two seasons, Brown has made more than three times as many free throws as he attempted in his first two years as he did the first two. And he’s highly efficient when he gets there, shooting 82.9% for his career.
With a growing multi-dimensional arsenal, Dane is improving his chances of playing high-level college basketball. If it’s up to him, he’ll reach the same heights that his dad did and play at the Division I level.
“I want to play at the highest level that I can, that’d be the highest level of Division I,” Dane said. “I could play at and I wanna finish my high school career strong. I want to play in states. I wanna win a sectional (championship) this year. I just want to be the best I could be.”