Even for the people closest to Anthony Brown, the past year has been downright unbelievable.

For years, there has been buzz in the Toledo basketball scene about Brown, a good-but-not-great high school player on the outstanding Libbey High School teams led by William Buford. He could dominate just about any rec-league crowd in the city, but playground legends almost always have the same fate: They live and die in the same place, telling stories about what might have been.

At age 26, Brown’s road to professional basketball looked nonexistent: He had not played a minute of NCAA basketball and still had not earned a pro contract. All he had was some minor league experience and a few YouTube highlight mixtapes.

Against the advice of almost everyone, Brown still treated basketball like his job. To his face, people wondered aloud if was time for Brown to go the 9-to-5 route just like everyone else. Behind his back, some of them said he was crazy for trying.

Last season, reality finally hit and Brown was proven correct. 

He earned his first contract at 27 years old, which led to a whirlwind year in which he played multiple seasons one after another, one in El Salvador, which led to a contract in Nicaragua, another in El Salvador, then another in Bolivia.

There is a professional market for Anthony Brown, just as he had been insisting for the entirety of his 20s.

“If you believe, you’ll keep chasing,” Brown said. “I kind of got that attitude from taking a back seat for so long.”

Working on potential

Brown’s story is one of late arrivals and near misses. Every night, Brown said he thinks of the occasions — and there are many — where his basketball dream almost died.

“Everybody says I have more than nine lives,” Brown said.

Brown’s career almost ended before anyone knew of his basketball potential. An admittedly disinterested student in his early teens, Brown was perilously close to washing out of high school. As a freshman, he earned failing grades and didn’t so much as try out for basketball.

In the beginning, Brown was on the classic course of a student likely to drop out of school. He made the wrong friends, didn’t care about his grades, and fell way behind academically. Brown’s grandparents begged him to apply himself and to focus his time on something worthwhile.

After enough people — including former Libbey coach Leroy Bates and many of his eventual teammates — told him he was good enough to play varsity, Brown started to listen. He started to earn Bs and Cs in the classroom, spent his free time at the gym, and turned into a contributor for the Cowboys.

He never was the headline-grabbing player — Buford was one of the top players in the country — yet everyone at Libbey knew there was more to Brown, a 6-foot-4 guard who could defend anyone one through three and run with anyone in the city.

“At Libbey, he was probably their fifth-best player — but he was one of their most gifted athletes,” said Carlton Mathis, a family friend and former Libbey assistant. “He just came out of his shadow and got out of his own way.”

A hard head

Almost everyone who plays pro ball has to play college first, and Brown didn’t receive a ton of attention from a four-year college in high school, and his poor freshman year academically didn’t help his case. 

He landed at Imperial Valley College, a junior college in southern California, and was leading the team in scoring.

But home was calling. Brown had an infant daughter in Toledo and — despite renewed interest from four-year colleges — he didn’t think he could make another three years without constant income.

Knowing full well almost nobody makes it to professional basketball without some college experience, Brown still made the jump.

He started playing semi-pro, thus voiding his NCAA eligibility.

“It was a tough situation,” he said. “Finish my dreams or feed this kid?”

Brown played for teams in Los Angeles, Houston, Dayton, and Michigan, often playing for a meager $900 to $1,000 per month. Even while sitting behind older players on nondescript teams, Brown thought he could make it to the professional ranks.

Hard-headed to a fault, Brown kept treating basketball as his full-time gig, although his resume made professional basketball almost impossible to obtain. 

He said he tried regular jobs four or five times but always came back to basketball.

Although he did so in relative anonymity, Brown still was improving significantly in his mid-20s. Mathis said in many of the local games, Brown was the best player on the court against former college players and current professionals.

Brad Burton-Crumby, Brown’s close friend and former Libbey teammate, said Brown’s work ethic is unlike anyone he has known. When Brown is in town, he is known to pound on Burton-Crumby’s door between 5 and 6 a.m., insisting he find his basketball shoes and come to the gym for the first of three workouts or a full day of games.

“He’s like a machine, for real,” Burton-Crumby said. “I don’t even think he eats, and I know he doesn’t sleep. His work ethic is crazy.”

Dark times

Aside from his age and lack of experience at a four-year school, Brown’s life — not just his career — almost was derailed by a court case in 2015.

Toledo Police charged Brown with a count of misdemeanor assault stemming from a 2012 incident in which police alleged he slapped a woman. Brown contends the entire incident was fabricated; the court found him guilty of the offense. (The woman could not be reached for comment.)

During the case, a bizarre incident with Municipal Court Judge Robert G. Christiansen almost landed Brown in jail. According to court documents, Judge Christiansen told Brown’s attorney he planned to release Brown on bond, but said Brown “obviously has a problem with me” after which he assigned the maximum sentence of six months in jail.

“I said something to the lawyer like, ‘I don’t know what he means,’ ” Brown said. “He went from there to saying I had a problem with him. I was lost.”

In 2016, an appellate court subsequently reversed the jail sentence but upheld the original conviction.

Brown called the case “one of the worst times” of his life, and feared he was going to jail for a crime — his first and only serious offense — he said he did not commit.

The reversal was a relief for Brown, who said he put “it in the past and just kept going” with basketball.

The pay-off

Free to pursue basketball, Brown finally received the call for which he had been waiting for years.

His series of YouTube highlights, good reviews, and friends in the basketball world culminated in a contract offer from C.D. Aguila, a club in San Miguel, El Salvador.

From there, his career took off. A drastically improved shooter and scorer since his early 20s, Brown averaged more than 26 points and instantly became one of the top players in the league.

After years of hoping for that exact scenario, it just doesn’t seem real.

“After a while, that’s all you sleep and eat: I’m going to get a contract,” Brown said. “It took me until I got off the plane in another country [to realize it].”

As crazy as it seems for a player with no college experience to break into pro basketball at age 27, Burton-Crumby said basketball players from South Toledo saw his talent all along.

“To this day, he’ll tell you he still hasn’t made it,” Burton-Crumby said. “We always knew he had the potential, we just couldn’t do it for him.”

Now living in Iowa with his fiancee, Brown is hoping his good showing from Central and South America last year will lead to bigger and better leagues in the future. So far, he has been in contact with teams from Italy and Saudi Arabia.

Brown trains youth players on the side, which he hopes to do for an occupation after his playing career is finished.

It might have happened later than anyone could have imagined, but Brown earned his wish: Basketball took him around the world and back.

It could be just the start.

“It’s always been my job,” Brown said, “but it’s finally my job in title.”

Contact Nicholas Piotrowicz at: npiotrowicz@theblade.com, 724-6110, or on Twitter @NickPiotrowicz

First Published July 2, 2017, 4:26 a.m.