photo by: Nick Krug

Kansas guard Malik Newman (14) and former Kansas head coach Larry Brown talk on the sidelines on Friday, March 30, 2018 at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas.

A former national championship-winning head coach at the University of Kansas, Larry Brown is once again returning to the college ranks, this time as an assistant, according to a report from The Athletic.

Most recently the head coach at SMU, Brown reportedly is set to join Penny Hardaway’s staff at Memphis as an assistant.

Brown has been away from the college game since 2016, when he finished a four-year run at SMU. His most recent job within the coaching ranks came in 2018, when he led Auxilium Torino, in Italy.

At the college level, of course, Brown’s largest accomplishment came at KU in 1988, when he coached Danny Manning and a sixth-seeded Jayhawks team to the national title. KU went 135-44 during the five seasons Brown was in charge.

While the 80-year-old Brown has worked as a head coach for most of his adult life, he only spent 11 seasons as a college head coach between his stints at UCLA, KU and SMU.

Brown has logged far more time at the professional level, primarily in the NBA. His first head coaching job came in the ABA in 1972, when he was with the Carolina Cougars. Next, Brown led the Denver Nuggets in the ABA, beginning in the 1974-75 season, and he remained with the organization as it joined the NBA two years later.

The only head coach to win both an NCAA and NBA title (with Detroit in 2004), Brown through the years coached the Nuggets, New Jersey Nets, San Antonio Spurs, Los Angeles Clippers, Indiana Pacers, Philadelphia 76ers, Detroit Pistons, New York Knicks and Charlotte Bobcats in the NBA, with his last stop coming in Charlotte during the 2010-11 season.

His career NBA coaching record is 1,098-904.

As pointed out by The Commercial Appeal, Brown hasn’t worked as an assistant college coach since the mid-1960s, when he was on Dean Smith’s staff at North Carolina.