Stan Brown, former pro-hoops player

ONE DAY in fall 1946, Stan Brown, considered the best scholastic basketball player in the city, walked into his South Philadelphia home and found the legendary Eddie Gottlieb sitting there.

Gottlieb, considered the man who brought pro basketball to Philadelphia with his South Philadelphia Hebrew Association (Sphas) team in the '20s, was there to make Stan a deal.

Although Stan was only 17 and still a student at South Philadelphia High School, Gottlieb wanted the 6 foot 3, 200-pound forward to turn pro.

Stan had been looking forward to switching to the now-defunct Brown Prep to prepare for college, but money was tight in the family and he couldn't resist Gottlieb's offer.

He recalled in a 1993 interview with the Daily News' Ted Silary that he thought he made $50 a game playing for the Sphas.

Stanley Brown, who later played with the former Philadelphia Warriors, also owned and coached by Gottlieb, then spent his working career as a delivery- truck driver for the old Evening Bulletin for 30 years, died Sunday of a heart attack while recovering from a hip replacement.

He was 80 and lived in Dover, Del., but had lived most of his life in South Philadelphia and the Northeast.

Silary interviewed Stan on the occasion of the drafting of Kobe Bryant by the Charlotte Hornets. Bryant, then also 17, played at Lower Merion High School. Silary wanted to contrast the excitement and media play that Bryant received with Stan's quiet, almost unnoticed entry into the pros.

Bryant was quickly traded to the Los Angeles Lakers, and remains a star there. Stan Brown went off to play for the Sphas of the American Basketball League, which became the Basketball Association of America and then today's National Basketball Association.

At Southern High, Stan led the school to a second consecutive Public League championship as a junior. He exploded for a 49-point game and set a five-county Philadelphia-area record for most points in league play (337, a 24.1 average).

Asked by Silary why he had left high school for pro ball, Stan said, "Money was tight; my father was very sick, out of work, bedridden.

"It wasn't a lot of money, but it was a lot when you didn't have anything."

The Sphas were coached in those days by Harry Litwack, who would later gain fame as Temple University's basketball coach.

As a pro, Stan played 19 games for the Sphas. His NBA career with the old Warriors consisted of 34 games and 104 points.

With the Warriors, Stan roomed for a while with the legendary Joe Fulks, one of the game's highest-scoring forwards, a pioneer of the jump shot. He was shot to death in an argument in 1976.

As a kid among older players for the Sphas, Stan said he was accepted by his teammates, but the team ran into anti-Semitism on the road.

"At some places with the Sphas - Wilmington, in particular - we'd be called every name in the book," he told Silary.

"We played a lot of exhibitions, sometimes against the [Harlem] Globetrotters. Beat 'em sometimes, too. They didn't like that. They wanted control of the game, but we were there to play."

He said his best year in basketball netted him $3,500.

Stan was born in Northeast Philadelphia to Myer and Edna Brown. The family moved to South Philadelphia when he was 11. He didn't graduate from South Philadelphia High School, but the school later gave him an honorary diploma.

After he retired from the Bulletin, he worked for a time for a mortgage company owned by his son, Scott. Stan and his wife, Loretta, moved to Dover about five years ago.

Besides his wife of 60 years and his son, Stan is survived by a daughter, Myra, and two grandchildren.

Services: Noon tomorrow at the Torbet Funeral Chapel, 1145 E. Lebanon Road, Dover.