ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Orlando native and former Louisville guard Mikel Brown is preparing for this year\u2019s NBA Draft, where he is projected to be a lottery pick on Tuesday night, and some mock drafts have him going in the top five.<\/p>\n
Brown, who averaged 18 points and nearly five assists per game at Louisville, said consistency has been central to his preparation. That includes the same shot, release and mechanics, along with support from his father, Christopher Brown Sr.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome people don’t have that. I don\u2019t take that for granted. So being able to have him, have my brother on the sideline, watch me work out,” Mikel Brown said. “And you know, having my father push me to the level that I can get to, like I said, I’m not going to take it for granted.”<\/p>\n
Christopher Brown Sr. said the moment feels both real and unfinished as his son approaches draft night.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s actually unreal \u2014 a little bit of, ‘This is really here’,” he said. “And the other part of it like, ‘Man, we got so much to work on before it gets here’.”<\/p>\n
Brown\u2019s father said he believes his son\u2019s game is built for the NBA.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s going to be better at the pro-level than he was at the college level because that\u2019s what we prepared for,” he said. “Whatever the mock drafts are saying, I can almost guarantee Mikel is going to go much higher than people think he’s going to go.”<\/p>\n
Brown\u2019s best college performance came against NC State, when he scored 45 points. He tied Louisville\u2019s single-game scoring record and broke the Cardinals\u2019 record with 10 3-pointers in the game.<\/p>\n
Brown missed the final month of the season and Louisville\u2019s NCAA Tournament run because of a back injury, but he said he is fully healthy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like myself again,” Brown said. “It hurt me not to play \u2014 going out and watching my teammates compete at the highest level without me being on the court. Just as a competitor, it hurt. But they were alongside me every step of the way throughout that whole process \u2014 my coaching staff was, my family was. They were all-in on just making sure I get healthy and achieving my dreams at the end of the day.”<\/p>\n
As draft night approaches, Brown said he is especially looking forward to eventually playing inside the Kia Center, an arena he passed by often while growing up in Orlando.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of this work I\u2019m putting in, all the hardships, all the frustration and all of the passion I put into this game, and to chase to where I want to be is to get into that arena,” he said. “So, I see it every time I’m driving down the highway. I look at it, like, ‘I’m trying to get there one day’.”<\/p>\n
Brown said he’ll be in New York to shake NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s hand when his name is called.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Orlando native and former Louisville guard Mikel Brown is preparing for this year\u2019s NBA Draft, where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":719493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[58333,41445,2722,309775,2808,355,3,6011,13677,16964,99,452],"class_list":["post-719492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-app-professional-sports","tag-app-sports","tag-app-top-stories","tag-brandon-green","tag-florida","tag-nba","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-professional-basketball","tag-sports","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}