There was no mention of what became the passion of Adrian's life: the youth basketball leagues and camps he ran for decades in Charlotte, publicized by yellow posters that popped up like daffodils around town.
Said Mary Skidmore, Adrian's caretaker and longtime employee: "He said he didn't want anybody to know he was sick. He knew he was going to die. He wanted it to be kept as quiet as possible."
But news of Adrian's death has begun to resonate through the college basketball community and Charlotte - two places where his impact was more than he likely would have ever admitted to.
"He kept in the shadows," Davidson basketball coach Bob McKillop said. "He stayed very quiet."
For a while, though, Adrian lived his life in the glare of one of college basketball's top programs.
"He was a heck of a player," former Davidson coach Lefty Driesell said. "He was going to be our next All-American."
Shy kid from Brooklyn
Adrian arrived at Davidson in 1968, a shy, shaggy-haired kid from Brooklyn, N.Y., who was interested in little more than playing basketball at the game's highest level. He often practiced by himself late at night in Johnston Gym, the Wildcats' old arena.
A 6-foot-3 lefty, Adrian was an excellent all-around athlete who played with an uncommon flair and intellect. He was a high school tennis champion in New York and excelled at chess, playing on a team in his neighborhood.
"He was beating adults [at chess] when he was 4 years old," his sister Lorraine Cheyne said.
Freshmen weren't eligible to play varsity basketball then, but Adrian's debut at Davidson was smashing. He averaged a school-record 28.7 points on the freshman team - and kept to himself on Davidson's small campus.
"It seemed like he never made any friends, and it didn't really seem like he wanted to," teammate Jerry Kroll said. "He seemed like a lost soul."
Adrian was joining a basketball program that was among the nation's elite. The Wildcats had played in three NCAA tournaments under Driesell, advancing to the regional finals and losing to North Carolina the previous two seasons.
The 1969-70 season brought a new coach, Terry Holland, replacing Driesell, who left for Maryland, and three key returning players - center Mike Maloy, Kroll and forward Doug Cook.
With sophomore Adrian added, Davidson was again a force. He quickly established himself as one of the top young players in the country, leading the team in scoring at 20.2 points per game. But it was his unconventional style that set him apart.
"Bryan was a very unorthodox shot maker," said George Mason coach Jim Larranaga, a high school teammate who was an assistant at Davidson from 1971-76. "He didn't have your typical jump shot. He could throw in a 15-foot hook shot or make a layup in a crowd.
"You were left wondering to yourself: 'How in the heck did he make that?' "
Adrian's game had some similarities to one of college basketball's biggest stars that season, Louisiana State's Pete Maravich, who combined craftiness and showmanship with other-worldly skills.
"Bryan was different, like Pete," said Bobby Cremins, a former South Carolina player who's now coaching at College of Charleston. "He had some Maravich in him."
Adrian's one-on-one mentality sometimes clashed with his more experienced teammates. But he fit in well enough to help Davidson to a 22-5 record and another NCAA tournament berth. The highlight of the season, though, was a game against Cremins' second-ranked Gamecocks, when Adrian's skills came together for one memorable night. In South Carolina's new Carolina Coliseum, Adrian scored 26 points - 22 in the second half - and had seven rebounds in a 68-62 Wildcats upset.
"When people ask me who were the best offensive players I guarded during my career, I always mention [North Carolina's] Charlie Scott, [Wake Forest's] Charlie Davis and [Notre Dame's] Austin Carr and because of that game, Bryan Adrian," Cremins said.
Adrian scored 16 points in the first 11 minutes of the second half and stole the ball three times from All-American John Roche. Adrian also called a timeout as he fell out of bounds with the ball - a precursor to a strategy that's frequently used now.
"He was just unstoppable," Cremins said. "Defense was my forte, and I could do nothing with him."
Said Adrian after the game: "I like pressure, and I like TV. I wish people could have seen this game nationwide."
Cremins noticed something about Adrian, however.
"It was almost like he was apathetic about things," he said. "He was a very cool dude."
Bad break
Nine months later, during a practice prior to his junior season, Adrian was bumped and fell after making a layup. He landed awkwardly, badly injuring cartilage in his left knee.
"He blew [his knee] out," said Neill McGeachy, a former Davidson assistant who is now athletic director at Lenoir-Rhyne. "After a few months, the knee was pronounced mechanically well, but he never accepted that it was completely restored. He never trusted the knee again."
Adrian played six games as a junior. He averaged 13.5 points and left the team before the season ended. It's unclear what happened, but he didn't play again for Davidson.
"The injury put him in a funk that he may have carried for a long time," McGeachy said. "People were trying to tell him he was well, but he didn't think he was. He maybe started not trusting people so much then."
After being declared academically ineligible for his senior year, Adrian left school and returned to New York.
Then came a cruel reminder of Adrian's potential: Boston Celtics general manager Red Auerbach, who had watched Adrian play the summer before his sophomore year, drafted him in the fifth round of the 1972 NBA Draft - although Adrian had a bad knee and hadn't played for a year. According to Adrian's cousin Don Solar, Auerbach sent Adrian a letter, inviting him to training camp, offering him a full medical evaluation and the opportunity to rehabilitate his knee under the team's guidance.
Solar said Adrian didn't respond to the letter. He didn't try out for the Celtics.
Instead, Adrian spent the next several years teaching tennis in New York and going to school at Lehman College, where he earned his degree in 1977.
By then, he had begun to cut himself off from his family and friends.
"He essentially became a recluse for several years, rebuffing any and all attempts to bring him back to the Davidson family," Holland said in an e-mail. "It was almost like he was lost without basketball."
Said his sister Lorraine: "Something went wrong. We started to lose contact with him."
Adrian returned to North Carolina in 1977, living briefly with new Davidson coach Bo Brickels and his family, driving around Davidson in an orange Volkswagen.
"He would hang out in the kitchen, looking for something to do," Brickels' wife Lynn said.
He hoped his future might be working with kids.
In an 1977 interview with the Charlotte Observer, at age 27, Adrian said: "I'm more mature now, and I have my priorities in order. What I want to do is teach tennis or coach somewhere in the area."
Not-so-happy camper
In the early 1980s, Adrian started his tennis and basketball camps in Charlotte.
"He reinvented himself," Holland said.
With easily recognizable signs (Bryan Adrian Fall Basketball: Get A Head Start On The Competition) posted in storefronts and on telephone poles around Charlotte, Adrian's camps flourished.
Although he eventually folded the tennis camps, he expanded his basketball brand, holding his Ten Star All-Star camps on various college campuses around the country. Around Charlotte, he ran basketball camps and leagues at sites that included East Mecklenburg High, South Mecklenburg High, the Jewish Community Center and St. Ann's School. He staffed the camps with college players and area high school coaches.
"He was very strict with the kids," said Dexter Feaster, a teacher at East Mecklenburg who often worked the camps. "But a lot of people didn't see his soft side. He was compassionate. He'd talk to the kids and tell them that anything you want you can get, but you have to earn it.
"And it didn't matter if you were the best or worst kid at the camp: You got a trophy and a T-shirt."
But Adrian's shy nature eventually took over again. He withdrew from the camps' daily operations, turning things over to Skidmore, his assistant. She said she will not re-open the camps because of Adrian's death.
Except for Skidmore, few people had contact with Adrian in recent years, former friends say. McGeachy said he saw him once or twice when Adrian held a camp at Lenoir-Rhyne. Adrian occasionally called Holland - by then the basketball coach at Virginia and now athletic director at East Carolina - to clarify NCAA rules about his camps or if he wanted to hire a Cavaliers player as a counselor.
"I worked his camps every year from when I was in college until last summer," Appalachian State coach Jason Capel said. "I never saw him - except once."
Capel said he and a few friends were at the Cheesecake Factory in Charlotte's SouthPark Mall last summer. A man approached their table and handed Capel a $100 bill.
"It was Bryan Adrian," Capel said. "He told me dinner was on him. He was a great man."
McKillop had lunch with Adrian on occasion.
"I ran into him here and there," McKillop said. "We tried to get him involved [with Davidson basketball] as best we could. But he would always very graciously decline."
Steve Shaughnessy, an assistant football coach at Butler High, sometimes saw Adrian walking through their Matthews neighborhood, still limping from the three surgeries it took to repair his knee.
"He'd stop and talk sometimes," Shaughnessy said. "He was very insightful about basketball and sports. He was interested in what you had to say. I always thought he would have been a good coach."
No family ties
But those kinds of encounters were rare.
"Sometimes friends would call," said Skidmore, his assistant. "I would give Bryan the number and name, and he'd say, 'Just throw that away.' It was like he wasn't interested in the past. It didn't concern him."
Adrian never married. He liked to travel, Skidmore said.
Lorraine Cheyne, who lives in Stamford, Conn., last saw her brother in 1993. She would often mail Adrian photos of relatives' weddings and of his nephews and nieces. But, she said, the envelopes returned unopened.
Jerry Convoy, a former assistant at Davidson who helped recruit Adrian, visited Charlotte recently and saw one of Adrian's camp signs. He noted the telephone number and called, hoping to renew acquaintances.
"I left a message but never got a call back," said Convoy, who learned of Adrian's death in late April.
And among those who didn't know Adrian was sick was his sister Lorraine.
"It was the most hurtful thing," she said of hearing her brother had died.
At Adrian's request, his burial in an east Charlotte cemetery was attended by Skidmore and a few members of her family.
He was laid to rest in a tennis shirt, sweat pants and a gift from Skidmore last Christmas - a new pair of basketball shoes.
Two weeks after Adrian's obituary appeared in the newspaper, Cheyne submitted another that included additional information about his relatives from Brooklyn, plus one final message from his family:
"... He will be loved and missed ..."
