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The NBA revealed on Thursday that longtime official Tony Brown passed away from pancreatic cancer. He was 55. In April of 2021, Brown was given the news that he had advanced pancreatic cancer, stage 4. After spending some time working in the NBA’s replay center during the previous season, he has recently entered hospice care in the Atlanta area.
Brown worked with the NBA for twenty years and officiated 1,110 regular season games. During the 2019–20 season, which concluded within the NBA bubble at Walt Disney World, he worked a total of 82 regular season games, 35 playoff games, and his first NBA Finals. The Associated Press reports that the native of Tallahassee, Florida has covered two All-Star games and the championship games of the CBA and WNBA.
The alumnus of Clark Atlanta University and multiple positions at Delta Airlines, he left his last job as a flight attendant in 2007 to devote himself full-time to officiating. In a statement, NBA commissioner Adam Silver called Tony Brown “one of the most outstanding referees in the NBA and an example to his colleagues.”
Tony’s devotion, tenacity, and enthusiasm made him such a highly respected official for 20 years, and he showed all of those qualities after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer early last year and returning to work this past season at the NBA replay center. It is with great sadness that we share the news of Tony’s loss with his wife Tina, their children Bailey, Basile, and Baylen, and the rest of the NBA family and officiating staff.
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