Lawrence Harvey Brown (born September 14, 1940) is an American basketball coach, who was most recently head men's basketball coach at Southern Methodist University. He is the only coach in basketball history to win both an NCAA national championship (Kansas Jayhawks, 1988) and an NBA title (Detroit Pistons, 2004). He has a 1,275-965 lifetime professional coaching record in the American Basketball Association (ABA) and the National Basketball Association (NBA) and is the only coach in NBA history to lead eight different teams to the playoffs. He also won an ABA championship as a player with the Oakland Oaks in the 1968-69 season, and an Olympic Gold Medal in 1964.

On April 17, 2012, ESPN reported that Brown was to be named the new head coach of the SMU Mustangs, replacing Matt Doherty, who had been fired from SMU earlier in March. Tim Jankovich, the head coach of Illinois State, was hired as the coach-in-waiting. After a rebuilding season in 2012-2013 (15-17), Brown brought SMU into the national conversation the following year and led the team to a 27-10 record in the 2013-2014 season. SMU swept the eventual National Champion University of Connecticut Huskies in conference play and was the most notable team not to be let into the NCAA Tournament field of sixty-eight. SMU went on to be the overall number one seed in the National Invitational Tournament, losing in the final game of the tournament to Minnesota. For the 2014-2015 season Brown secured the services of the top ranked point guard in the nation, Emmanuel Mudiay, over the likes of the Kentucky and Kansas. Before ever playing a game for the Mustangs, Mudiay elected to play professionally in China and forgo his amateur status. On September 29, 2015, Brown was suspended by the NCAA for 30% of the Mustangs' games in the upcoming 2015-2016 season, and the team was banned from 2016 post-season play, placed on probation for 3 years, and lost 9 scholarships over a 3-year period, due to a lack of head coach control. The NCAA found that Brown failed to report violations when a former administrative assistant committed academic fraud on behalf of a student-athlete and he initially lied to enforcement staff about his knowledge of the potential violations. Brown was the faculty advisor for the SMU student spirit group that supports campus athletics programs named "The MOB", as Brown is known as "The Godfather". On July 8, 2016 Brown announced he would be resigning as head basketball coach.

Answer the following question by taking a quote from the article: How did his career begin at SMU?
On April 17, 2012, ESPN reported that Brown was to be named the new head coach of the SMU Mustangs, replacing Matt Doherty,