BROWN Ira

General
MOVE TO JAPAN
In 2011 he moved to Japan where he played 5-on-5 basketball for a number of Japanese B.League teams. He met a Japanese woman, Ayaka, who he would later marry, and gained Japanese citizenship in 2016, and represented Japan at the 2016 Asia Challenge in Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2019 he was called up to the Japanese national 3x3 basketball team for the first time. (nhk.or.jp, 20 May 2020; gozags.com, 24 Aug 2012)

TOUGH CHILDHOOD
He grew up in Corsicana, TX, United States of America and says he had a difficult childhood because of his parents' substance abuse problems. "The adults of our family, they were on drugs and they were out just running the streets, pretty much. And my mum and dad were on drugs really bad. You walk in and see your mum doing crack or catching your dad doing it." He lived in a three-bedroom house with around 20 family members, and there was no running water to do laundry or take showers, so at school he and his cousins were teased for smelling bad. "Of course I felt hopeless, but I knew that it's either continue to be poor or continue to smell bad, or continue to do all these things or just simply do something about it.There were always ways in which I wanted to earn money and earn it the honest way." (wbur.org, 10 Mar 2017)

INSPIRATION
The home in which his family lived was burned down when he was young, so he went to live with his grandmother, and found inspiration in a maths tutor. "He [the maths tutor] was pretty much my father figure in which I looked up to visiting every single week. And he had this really huge ring on his hand, and he always, like, let me play with it or whatever, let me put it on my finger. And it was, like, a championship ring of some sort. I don't really remember the exacts." He says the ring inspired him to dream of a career in sports. (wbur.org, 10 Mar 2017)