MCC's 1989-1990 basketball team, including New York Knicks head coach Mike Brown (No. 21) and GCU president Brian Mueller (kneeling on far right), who was then an assistant coach. Photo: Maricopa Community College, courtesy of Paul Coro
The road to this year's NBA Championship went through the Valley — Mesa Community College, to be precise.
State of play: New York Knicks head coach Mike Brown began his U.S basketball career at MCC, helping the 1989-1990 team win 30 consecutive games.
The intrigue: Brown's ties to MCC have been well-documented, but longtime Arizona sports reporter Paul Coro recently found a team photo that'd been lost to history.
Coro, who now covers Grand Canyon University athletics for the school's news site, tells us he found the picture in a tournament program he located in MCC's library files — "Needle in a haystack!"
He shared the photo on social media over the weekend following the Knicks' championship win, and pointed out another familiar face: GCU president Brian Mueller, who was then the MCC team's assistant coach.
We're adding this to our "Phoenix is the smallest big city in America" files.
Editor's note: The photo caption has been corrected to say GCU president Brian Mueller is kneeling on the far right (not the far left).
