Former Kansas University basketball coach Larry Brown, left, poses with Danny Manning, center, with whom Brown won the 1988 NCAA championship, and current KU head coach Bill Self, a graduate assistant on Brown's 1986 Final Four team.

Twenty years have passed since Larry Brown and Danny Manning embraced at center court at Kemper Arena – coach and MVP, celebrating Kansas University’s 1988 national championship victory over Oklahoma.

Two full decades, gone in a blink of an eye.

“Gosh, it went so fast,” Brown said Thursday afternoon in Allen Fieldhouse.

“You look in the mirror, and you are reminded you are older. Personally I feel the same as when I was coaching here. Danny and I were talking about that : it doesn’t seem that long ago.”

Now 67, Brown is back in town for this weekend’s 20-year national title reunion as well as a celebration of 110 years of KU basketball.

The soft-spoken Hall of Famer, who has worked as head coach for two ABA, eight NBA and two college teams, said his five years in Lawrence (1983-88) were impossible to top.

“I’ve been blessed with all the places I’ve been and all the opportunities I’ve had,” Brown said. “Being here and the two years I was assistant and freshman coach at North Carolina (under Dean Smith in mid 1960s) are by far the happiest I’ve been.”

Brown, who led KU to two Final Fours in five years, sometimes wonders what it would have been like to have stayed at KU after the ’88 title season, instead of leaving for the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs and on to the Los Angeles Clippers, Indiana Pacers, Philadelphia 76ers, Detroit Pistons and New York Knicks.

“You look back : if I had to do it all over again, I’d loved to stay here,” said Brown, executive vice president of the 76ers. “Knowing coach Smith and what he’s meant to me and that program : coach Smith would call me on the phone (as an ex-player) and would ask me about my mom, wife, kids. It wasn’t just me, it was everybody who played for him.

“Even though I speak to Milt (Newton), Ced (Hunter), ‘Turg’ (Mark Turgeon), Tad Boyle, I think it would have been neat if I sat in that office (making the calls). I hear from Jeff Guiot, but I might be in Philadelphia or might be in Detroit.

“It would have been phenomenal. But I also look at it, KU got to experience Roy (Williams) and got a taste of Bill (Self) hopefully for a long time.”

Brown, who observed KU’s practice Thursday afternoon after touring the Booth Family Hall of Athletics, said he definitely missed the thrill of coaching in KU’s tradition-rich fieldhouse.

“I tell everybody there’s not a place around – I know Chapel Hill, Pauley Pavilion, Cameron, you name it. They are pretty special, but there’s nothing like this,” Brown said.

“All the guys who scout, I always tell them, ‘You’ll never have an experience like Allen Fieldhouse.’ This is how a college fieldhouse is supposed to be.”

Brown, who said he has watched most of KU’s games on TV this season, liked what he saw up close and personal on Thursday.

“I admire the hell out of Bill Self,” Brown said of his graduate assistant on KU’s 1986 Final Four team. “To follow Roy and what he did, his charisma and everything. Everywhere I go, people talk about him (Self) in such a positive light. I think he can coach. I like his team and the way they play, and it’s good to see Danny (assistant Manning) sitting over there.”

Brown said watching Self’s practices and those of his former pupils such as Texas A&M’s Mark Turgeon make him realize how much he misses coaching.

He hopes to coach again.

“I want to badly,” Brown said. “I still have a passion to do it. I think I still have something to offer. I applied for Princeton (last offseason) and got interviewed. Chancellor Budig (Gene, former KU leader who lives in New Jersey) got me involved, and Lew (Perkins, KU AD) tried to help me. I want to get back.”

College or pro?

“Whatever,” Brown said. “When I say that, I worry it might be taken I want somebody’s job. That’s not it. Inevitably, if somebody has an opening, I hope I’d be considered. I don’t want it to end the way my last year went.”

Brown, whose last coaching stint, with the Knicks, ended with his termination, says he could coach for years to come.

“Everywhere I go, people ask me how I am physically. Maybe people thought I had broken down,” he said. “I feel great.”

He was in his element Thursday, at practice in KU’s charming gym.

“I’m not sure I miss the games. The games made me feel a bit nervous. I always wondered if you prepared your team for all the things they might encounter. I really loved practice, smelling the gym and being around the kids. I really miss that. I desperately miss the teaching,” he said.

He also forging relationships with players.

“I listen to what college coaches say to their players and always laugh. Some of the things they say : if you said that to an NBA guy, he’d quit or call your agent or ask for you to be fired,” Brown said. “They don’t mean it in a bad way. It’s just the way it is.

“A college kid looks at the coach and says, ‘He really cares and wants me to be better.’ I’m not knocking the pros. I love the time I had, but it’s nothing like the relationships you build, the effect you can have on kids in a positive way if you do it the right way.”