The pinnacle of Mel Brown’s basketball career came in 1956, when he was selected as part of the Canadian delegation to the tournament at that year’s summer Olympics in Melbourne. There, the Canadians placed ninth overall after losing two of their three games in round one, but winning their classification match against Australia; Brown played in all four contests. He was much more successful as a coach, most notability as the head of the Vancouver IGA Grocers, who won three consecutive Canadian national championships from 1966 through 1968. With his team, he was inducted into the British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame in 1997 and the British Columbia Basketball Hall of Fame in 2017. Brown also played handball, baseball, racquetball, and golf and by career was a businessman with Simson Maxwell Ltd, a manufacturing company.
Canada