Brown has searched the world, or at least an unprecedented bulk of the NBA, to get the championship feeling again. He never forgot it. He learned in Houston how champions feel, how they think, what they believe.

"We were down 3-1 in Phoenix," said Brown, a Kings reserve now and a key player in the Rockets' second championship run then. "This is before I had won a championship. Everybody on the team had won one. I was just up from the CBA. We were in the hallway. When Dream (Hakeem Olajuwon) came out of the locker room, everybody was loose. Everybody was confident. Then Dream came out, and he and Kenny (Smith) said, `Let's go out and shock the world.'

"I was like, `Man, this is pretty cool.' I felt great. We went out and won that game in overtime."

A month later, the Rockets won their second championship.

By then, Brown had already played for the Cavaliers, Lakers, Nets and Mavericks. He would move on to the Suns, Bucks, Hawks, Hornets (twice), Spurs and Warriors, with a repeat performance for the Cavs along the way. In 11 NBA seasons, he played for 12 teams. But he never felt that confidence, determination and resolve again -- until now.

The Kings were beaten by the Lakers on Sunday when Robert Horry, Brown's teammate with the Rockets, tossed in a stunning 3-pointer at the buzzer. But though the two-time defending champions had tied the series 2-2, Brown saw the same stubborn determination afterward that he saw in that hallway with the Rockets in 1995. In his eyes, for the first time since that season in Houston, he saw a champion.

The Kings did not hope just to finally beat the Lakers and their own demons -- they expected it. They were sure of it. This, they had become convinced, was their time, last-second miracles be damned.

"The similarity I see was right after the game we lost," Brown said. "I wanted to see how the mood would be, how everybody would come in the next day, how quickly everybody would forget about it. Everybody was upset right when it happened. But by the time we got to the plane, everybody was talking about it, and it was pretty much over.