The Boston Globe recently spoke with Dee Brown, the former Boston Celtics player who was in town on New Year’s Eve as a member of the Sacramento Kings coaching staff, and naturally his infamous Wellesley incident came up.
If you don’t recall, Brown and his fiancee were stopped by a handful of Wellesley police officers with guns drawn in September of 1990 after he was misidentified by a bank employee as a suspect in a robbery. The 21-year-old basketball pro was released once he showed identification, but the damage was done at a time when the Boston area’s racial tensions were flaring in the wake of the Charles Stuart case.
A snippet here from the Globe’s Sunday article:
Brown said he was not embittered by the incident. “My experience, other than the initial one, which I don’t think had anything to do [with racism], it was a case of mistaken identity,” he said. “There’s tension in Boston like there’s tension in New York, tension everywhere else. I really don’t get too caught up in it. The fans are great. They love their Celtics. They love their Bruins and their Patriots.
“I think nowadays, it’s not so much a black and white thing, it’s a green thing: money and Celtics. If you’ve got cap space and guys want to play here, I don’t think an African-American would not come to Boston.”
Brown actually lived briefly in Wellesley Hills after the incident.
Wellesley has since been home to numerous Celtics players and management, including Ray Allen, Danny Ainge, Brad Stevens and Keyon Dooling.
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