Dale Brown, who coached some of the most successful basketball teams in LSU history, as well as one of the Tigers’ most famous players, Shaquille O’Neal, has died. He was 90 years old.
Brown, whose death was announced Friday by LSU, was just over a week shy of what would have been his 91st birthday. On Wednesday, Brown was announced as the 2027 recipient of the John R. Wooden Legends of Coaching Award.
“We have lost the most loving and beloved man we have ever known,” Brown’s family said in a statement. “Dale Brown always put others first. He always led with his heart. He was always a great humanitarian above all else. Dale fell in love with Louisiana a long time ago. And the people of Louisiana loved him immediately. We will be forever grateful.”
Brown was named AP Coach of the Year in 1981, was a four-time SEC Coach of the Year and has the most wins by a coach in program history. The panache with which his teams played and the speed with which they won filled LSU’s domed Pete Maravich Assembly Center with such a wild crowd that the stadium took on the nickname “Dome of the Deaf.”
Highlights of his 25 years as LSU’s coach included two trips to the NCAA Final Four with his 1981 and 1986 teams.
He coached O’Neal for three seasons, from the 1989-90 campaign until the charismatic 7-foot-1 superstar entered the 1992 NBA draft and was selected first overall by Orlando. LSU earned NCAA Tournament bids in all three of O’Neal’s seasons, the first with Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, then known as Chris Jackson, also an All-American, but did not advance past the second round.
The final years of Brown’s career were marked by an NCAA investigation into alleged recruiting tactics that were now permitted.
During the 1996-97 season, the NCAA concluded that a booster paid approximately $5,000 to one of Brown’s former players, Lester Earl, while he played for the Tigers.
Brown retired in 1997 and LSU was placed on probation in 1998.
Yet Brown remained popular in Louisiana, where his enthusiasm, sociability and expressiveness long captivated fans. Many LSU fans also seemed to subscribe to a storyline — espoused largely by Brown — that he was unfairly singled out and persecuted by the NCAA.
Brown was later inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame and LSU’s basketball court was named in his honor in 2022 (and also subsequently for late women’s coach Sue Gunter in 2024).
When Brown’s name was revealed on the field during a halftime ceremony, Brown credited his former players and assistant coaches, many of whom were in attendance that night.
“The best potential in me is us,” Brown said. “That’s an example.”
Former Temple coach John Chaney called Brown “one of the true statesmen of college basketball,” according to a profile of Brown on LSU’s website.
That same profile also quoted UCLA Hall of Fame coach John Wooden saying he “will always remember Dale for his enthusiasm.”
“There are those who say he’s a fraud — they just can’t believe he could be what he professes to be,” Wooden said then. “But I never questioned that. He amazed me because there’s a lot more depth to this man. He was much more than a basketball coach.”
Brown was a native of Minot, North Dakota, and was a three-sport varsity athlete in basketball, football and track and field at Minot State.
After college, he spent a little more than half a decade as a high school coach in North Dakota and California before taking college assistant positions at Utah State in 1966 and Washington State in 1971.
When he was hired by LSU in 1972, few Tigers fans had heard of him. His name recognition and popularity began to increase after LSU defeated then-third-ranked Memphis State in the home opener of Brown’s first season.
Brown went on to coach an LSU team projected to finish last in the SEC with a 9-9 league record, earning him his first SEC Coach of the Year honor.
Brown went on to post a career record of 448-301 at LSU. After his retirement, Brown became a motivational speaker, a basketball analyst for television shows, and started the Dale Brown Charitable Foundation, which aims to promote educational opportunities for students with physical disabilities or from financially distressed families.
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