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Ursuline’s Brown gets shot with Cavs
By Joe Scalzo
On Friday morning, D’Aundray Brown was helping his mother move furniture in Cleveland when he got a call from his agent.
“He said I had to be at the Cavs’ practice facility [for the rookie minicamp that afternoon],” said Brown, an Ursuline High graduate who recently finished his basketball career at Cleveland State. “I’m just going in there with the intent of working hard and trying to improve and catch their attention.”
Brown, who had two workouts with Cleveland before Thursday’s draft, is competing with 29 other rookies this weekend trying to earn a spot on the Cavaliers’ summer league team, which will compete in Las Vegas from July 13-22.
Friday’s workout also featured players from overseas and the D-League and consisted mostly of five-on-five games.
“It went well,” said Brown, whose parents, Aundra Brown and Sharella Thomas, both played basketball at Youngstown State. “I always feel like it can go better, but I feel like I’m improving every day and I’m hoping to have a better day tomorrow.
“I wasn’t too sure of the draft or how that would go but I knew I’d have an opportunity to work out for a team and maybe get on a summer league team.”
Brown, who already has a couple offers to play on D-League teams, is the first Valley native to earn NBA interest since Boardman’s Terence Dials, who played with the Cavaliers’ summer league in 2007.
Dials, the Big Ten player of the year at Ohio State in 2006, also earned a training camp invitation with the Toronto Raptors in 2006 but opted to play overseas.
“It means a lot to get a chance, especially coming from Youngstown where all you hear about is football,” Brown said, chuckling. “It feels good to finally get a basketball player out to represent the city.”
Brown (6-4, 195) averaged 10.8 points and 4.5 rebounds per game this season for the Vikings. He was named to the Horizon League’s All-Defensive team in 2010 and 2012.
“He’s got a lot of skills,” said Keith Gunther, Brown’s high school coach. “There’s always guys in the league who find a niche as a defensive specialist who can rebound and knock down shots.
“He can play that role. He can take that key guy out of a game.”
Despite missing the 2011 season with a hand injury, Brown said he never wavered in his belief that he could play in the NBA.
“That’s always been one of my dreams — or the dream,” Brown said. “I’ve always seen myself going to a higher level and playing professionally.”
His former CSU teammate, Heat guard Norris Cole, agreed. When Cole was asked to make the Heat’s selection in an ESPN The Magazine mock draft, he picked Brown.
“I don’t think he [Cole] was saying it because he was a friend or a roommate; he said it because he knows how talented and tough D’Aundray is,” said Gunther.
That toughness, Gunther said, is what gives Brown a chance to stick.
“He’s the type of kid that can just make everyone around him work harder,” Gunther said. “He’s never going to let anyone outwork him in the gym, whether it’s the highest-paid guy or the lowest-paid guy.”