Chucky Brown never expected it would take him so long to earn his college degree. When he finished his senior year at North Carolina State in 1989 and headed off to the NBA, he figured he would finish the 27 credit hours within a few years, even if he had to wait until his playing days were over.

"They told us that the average life of a professional player was four years, so I was expecting four years and be done," said Brown, now in his first season as an assistant coach with the Roanoke Dazzle. "It just so happens that it went longer."

Quite a bit longer. Brown played parts of 13 seasons for a record-tying 12 NBA teams, earning a championship ring with the 1994-95 Houston Rockets and fashioning a reputation as a hard-working forward who would do anything his team needed to win.

But still, those credit hours remained incomplete. It wasn't until the waning years of his career in the late 1990s that he started taking classes again. And it wasn't until December that Brown finally graduated from N.C. State with a degree in sociology.

"It feels good," he said. "I was always close, but ... I just never really had time, because basketball is year-round."

Brown's motivations included becoming the first member of his family to finish college, but he could benefit professionally as well. He plans to stick to pro basketball for now - "people in the NBA are very high on him as a young coach," Dazzle head coach Kent Davison said - but Brown wanted to keep open his options for coaching college or high school ball. Bachelor's degrees are often a prerequisite for those positions.

"It's amazing what doors open up for you when you get that little piece of paper," Davison said. "I've told him a number of times that it takes a special person after that many years to say, 'I'm going to finish this thing.' But that's one reason why I think he was the kind of player that he was. It's about finishing things, whether it's finishing plays, finishing games, finishing the season."

That attitude was a major reason Brown, a 6-foot-8 former All-ACC selection, stayed in the NBA. Waived by one team, he would invariably find work somewhere else.

"If I had to move, it was no big deal," he said. "I took the approach: Either you adapt or you perish."

He became the league's all-time journeyman, setting a record that has since been tied by Tony Massenburg and Jim Jackson.

Still, Brown felt it important to get his degree.

"That," Dazzle point guard Cory Alexander said, "says a lot about him."

Brown said he's not sure how the degree will help his coaching prospects, but "I've already noticed now people treat me a little different. They don't just look at me as some idiot ex-player."

Brown began chipping away at his remaining credit hours by taking three correspondence classes through Brigham Young University and the University of North Carolina, and then added an English class that required him to meet online with his classmates once a week. But his final five classes last fall had to be taken in person at N.C. State. The experience was a lot different than his final semester in the spring of 1989.

"Fifteen years ago I was with people my age," said Brown, 36. "I was a little younger, a little sillier probably. Wasn't really paying as much attention probably before. This time I was one of the older people in the class. I just sat there and just listened, paid more attention to it."

Rarely did anyone recognize Brown or remember him as a former Wolfpack star. Even when he went to the gym to play pickup basketball, he sometimes got passed up as teams were picked. Still near his playing weight of 220 pounds, Brown made sure to show his skills once the game started.

In October, he was hired to coach in the NBDL and assigned to the Dazzle. Brown finished much of his course work before the season started in mid-November, though he had to drive back to Raleigh to finish a few final assignments.

At graduation on Dec.15, he watched his mother, Minnie, cry tears of joy. He thought of his father, Clarence Sr., who was back home in Leland, N.C., battling prostate cancer. And he wished his college coach, the late Jim Valvano, could have been there to see it.

"I know that he would have been there," Brown said.

Yet after all that, Brown still doesn't have his actual diploma. Administrators at N.C. State say it should arrive by mail this month.

"I'm going to get it," he said with a laugh. "They got my address right. They got my phone numbers. I gave them everything."