Corey Brewer (2004-07) – Small Forward/Shooting Guard
Corey Brewer was a baller on the best Gators basketball team ever. Plain and simple.
Born in Portland, Tenn., Brewer played prep ball at Portland High School where he averaged 29.4 points and 12.8 rebounds per game as a senior in 2003–04. His efforts earned him Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association Class 2A “Mr.Basketball”, McDonald’s All American and fourth-team Parade All-American honors, while Rivals.com pegged him as a four-star recruit, listing him at No. 7 among small forwards and the No. 31 player in the nation overall.
Brewer came to Gainesville on an athletic scholarship under head coach Billy Donovan in 2004, playing three years in Gainesville and providing a cornerstone for the program’s most accomplished basketball team. He posted the first triple-double in team history during his sophomore season, with his 13 assists setting the highest mark since Jason Williams dished out 17 for a school record back in 1997.
During Brewer’s collegiate career at Florida, he and his fellow starters won three-straight SEC titles from 2005-07 and two-straight NCAA titles from 2006-07. While prognosticators predicted him to be a mid-first round pick in the 2006 NBA Draft, he and his fellow teammates all returned for the second national championship to cement their legacy in UF immortality.
He averaged 13.2 points, 4.7 rebounds, 2.9 assists and 1.9 steals per game during his junior campaign, proving his versatility both with and without the ball. Brewer was named the Most Outstanding Player of the 2007 Final Four after averaging 16 points and five rebounds per game, including 13 points, eight rebounds, three steals and a block in the national championship game against Ohio State.
Brewer declared for the NBA Draft with teammates Joakim Noah, Al Horford and Taurean Green three days after claiming their second NCAA crown. He was selected with the No. 7 pick by the Minnesota Timberwolves, where he played 79 games with 35 starts his rookie year. However, he lost the 2008-09 season to an ACL tear after playing only 15 games, though he bounced back the next year posting a career-high 13 points along with 3.4 rebounds, 2.4 assists and 1.4 steals per game in a full 82 appearances.
In 2011, Brewer was a part of the blockbuster trade that sent Carmelo Anthony from the Denver Nuggets to the New York Knicks. He was waived by the Knicks without ever playing a game with the team and picked up by the Dallas Mavericks, where he made 13 underwhelming appearances before being traded to Denver in December of 2011.
Brewer’s game rebounded and even flourished in the Mile High City, finishing off the 2011-12 season much stronger than in Dallas, and playing a full 82 games the following season while recording the first of three-straight seasons averaging double-figure points.
The “Greyhound’s” career since has been mostly mediocre, failing to reach double-digit points average in a season since 2014-2015 in a campaign split between a return to Minneapolis and the Houston Rockets. Over the course of 12 seasons, Brewer has played for eight different teams — most recently with the Sacramento Kings in the 2018-19 season, which began with a couple of 10-day contracts and resulted in a veteran minimum contract to finish the season.
Brewer did not play in the NBA this past season, though he has been quoted in saying that there is still fuel left in the tank and he plans on continuing his preparation routines. So far in his professional career, he has averaged 8.7 points, 2.8 rebounds and 1.5 assists per game in 814 games played. Hopefully, the NBA has not seen the last of “The Drunken Dribbler” just yet.
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