South Bend Saint Joseph senior Tyler Brown determined to live life on his terms
SOUTH BEND — When he needs to clear the clutter and confusion, South Bend Saint Joseph senior boys’ basketball player Tyler Brown gets in his car and goes.
When life gets too hectic to handle, the 17-year-old Brown knows where to head — to the spot where it almost ended.
It's often quiet and often at night as Brown rolls up to the corner of Johnson Street and Elwood Avenue, which seems on the surface just another intersection on the city’s northwest side. He’ll approach and ease his car to a stop. He’ll sit there and think. He’ll remember everything, well, remember everything as best he can. His brain is a bit foggy from the night. That night.
It was Oct. 7, 2021, and Brown was in the front seat of his father’s car as they reached the intersection. To get from his father’s house to his mother’s house, or from his mother’s house to his father’s house, Brown needed to cross that intersection. That’s where he was on that Thursday night, a night he was learning to drive so he could get his license. So he could take one more step into independence, into adulthood.
It was a quiet night. It was a fun night. It was a happy night. Then, suddenly, darkness.
In the worst case of mistaken identity, Brown was shot in the head by someone in a passing car. A bullet pierced the left side of his head and settled near the top of his skull. It is still there.
Brown underwent six hours of emergency surgery. A part of his skull was removed, then replaced. He spent 34 days in intensive care at Memorial Hospital. He was placed in a drug-induced coma to help him heal, help him survive. He was fed through a tracheostomy — a tube inserted in his throat. Nobody knew if his next breath would be his last.
Doctors told his family that Brown might never talk or walk and he wouldn’t play basketball again. That was his sport. That was his life. In an instant, everything about that life, about his life, was gone.
Two-plus years later, when at the intersection of Johnson and Elwood, Brown thinks about his past and his present and his future. He has a driver’s license. He walks. He talks. He plays basketball. He wants to go to college next fall and study sports management.
He's living his best life, or as best he can given everything that he’s overcome.
In the days, weeks and months that first year after the incident, Brown often avoided the intersection. Found a different route to his pop’s or his mom’s. Went out of the way. Went whatever way. Just didn’t go that way.
Now, when he has a down day, Brown returns to the intersection to sit, stare and dream. Almost always then, he smiles.
“Sometimes when I get sad, I’ll go by it like, ‘OK,’” Brown said in mid-November after basketball practice inside the Saint Joseph main gym. “All of a sudden, I’ll get happy. It puts a smile on my face. Like, oh, snap, I overcame that.”
That is documented with pictures. Of him in the hospital bed after surgery with tubes running in and out of him, machines hooked up to monitor this and check that. For the longest time, his family didn’t want Brown to see the photos. Too painful. Too soon. Now, Brown wants to look at the pictures. He needs to look at the pictures.
When he does, when he remembers how close to death he was, he has the same reaction.
“All I do is laugh,” he said. “I don’t cry. I want to see what I’ve been through and what I overcame.”
In December 2021, Trueth Korleon Griffin for arrested for shooting Brown. On Aug. 18, 2023, he went to trial and was found guilty on three of four charges. On Sept. 19, Griffin was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Brown didn’t know the person who shot him. He never met the person who shot him. He doesn’t think much about the person who shot him.
That night, that moment his life changed, Brown often thinks about that. A year to the day, it was rough. Raw. So many emotions. So many thoughts. The second year to the day, Brown decided to flip the script. He wouldn’t be sad. He wouldn’t be mad. He considered it his second birthday – a day he was, in essence, reborn.
“This year, I was happy; I was excited,” Brown said of Oct. 7. “I’m happy because God saved my life. God kept me here to help other people and put a smile on their faces. That will put one on mine.”
From a curiosity to a competitor
Another late-afternoon practice in the run-up to the Nov. 28 season opener at Concord, the start of Brown’s senior season, unfolds at Saint Joe just like any other. When it’s time to dig in and defend in the halfcourt, Brown digs in and defends. When it it’s time to get out in transition, he’s flying down the wing to the other end of the floor. When it’s time for sideline-to-sideline sprints to end practice, Brown sprints. He finishes first.
Released from Memorial on his road to recovery, Brown watched the first Saint Joe home game on Dec. 3, 2021, against Adams from the cafeteria windows that overlooked the court. That night, and for many nights that followed, he was known as the kid who was shot in the head. Even when he returned in a reserve role last season, he was seen more as a curiosity than a competitor.
Today, he’s just TB. He wants to be known as just another member of the varsity basketball team. Don’t look at him any differently. Don’t treat him any differently. Just let No. 22 hoop.
“Sometimes you get a reminder of what happened to him,” said Saint Joe head coach Eric Gaff. “He’s just Tyler now. He’s back and he’s Tyler and he’s OK and we’re OK and moving forward.
“He comes in and works as hard as anybody.”
More: South Bend teen shot last week was in 'wrong place at wrong time,' family member says
With a black t-shirt under his white tank top jersey and Columbia blue practice shorts that clash with his neon orange and black low-cut kicks, Brown’s a blur of activity and energy for the 95-minute workout. He moves. He cuts. He runs. He talks. He apologizes for a bad pass. He raises his hand and admits that a ball went off his hands last before going out of bounds. He sets up in the corner and calls for the ball, but when it comes, he doesn’t shoot it, as 99.9 percent of kids in that spot would do. Got an open shot? Gotta take it, right?
Brown instead drives it to the basket, breaks down the defense, then passes it back to sophomore Nick Shrewsberry who sticks an open 3. That’s a heady play. That’s the right play. Later, when Shrewsberry misses a breakaway dunk, Brown is the first to remind him to move on to the next play.
He’s out there hooping, and he couldn’t be happier.
“He’s living a dream,” said Jayce Lee, Brown’s cousin, classmate and basketball teammate. “You can see it in practice. It’s truly inspiring to see him have that drive after something so traumatic. Seeing him play just feels good.”
Brown has seemingly made a seamless transition from fighting for his life to battling on the basketball court, but there are obstacles.
When the bullet entered the left side of his head near his brain, it affected the right side of his body. Use of his right hand is still a struggle for the left-handed Brown. He demonstrates by quickly opening and closing his left hand into a fist. He can’t do that with his right hand, which makes dribbling with the hand just as trying. But he’s trying. He won’t ever stop trying. He won’t beg off a drill, or out of practice.
“In the scheme of things,” Gaff said, “we’ll take that.”
There also are moments when Brown’s memory fades. He’s excited to share what he did on the anniversary of his second “birthday”, but he can’t immediately remember. When he talks of the three team rules Brown mentions sacrifice and compete but can’t quite remember the third. He tries to remember. You can see it in his eyes that he wants to remember.
He can’t. That’s hard. That’s OK.
“I sometimes forget things in like two minutes,” Brown said. “It’s frustrating, but it will take some time.”
Gaff expects Brown to play a reserve role this season. With his drive and determination, he could become a nightmare of a defensive demon, assigned to wear down and wear out another team’s perimeter threat. He might not score many points, but he’ll get teammates shots in their spots. He’ll hustle. He’ll compete. He’ll care.
“I’m going to work hard, defend and never take a break. Brown said. “I just want to help my teammates be better, be a better teammate, better basketball player, better person, better young men in life.”
The day’s practice has ended, and the basketballs have been put away. The gym has emptied. All the guys have gone home, except Brown. Gaff has retreated to the coach’s office, where he figures to remain for at least another hour before he can call it a day. That’s because Brown will hunt down a basketball and return to the court for more work, to do what he was told he’d never again do.
He’s usually the first in the gym (by 6 a.m. before school) and the last to leave. If it was up to Brown, he’d stay on the court “forever.” Leave him the keys. He'll hit a few more shots, hit the lights and lock up.
“It just brings me joy and brings me happiness,” he said. “When I’m on this court, I forget about everything else and just smile.”
Follow South Bend Tribune and NDInsider columnist Tom Noie on X (formerly Twitter): @tnoieNDI. Contact: (574) 235-6153.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: South Bend Saint Joseph senior Tyler Brown cherishes time on basketball court, in life
