A sneak peak at tomorrow’s notebook tonight …

Lakers coach Mike Brown maintains a special fondness for the Denver Nuggets.

After all, they gave him his first job in the NBA.

Actually, his first job wasn’t a job at all.

Brown served as an unpaid intern during the summer of 1992, before he finished his final course work at the University of San Diego. Then-Nuggets general manager Bernie Bickerstaff then hired him as the team’s video coordinator.

“All I can remember is he offered me 15 grand,” Brown said today. “In my head I was, like, ‘Sucker, I got you fooled. All you had to do was offer me a couple pairs of sneakers and some sweat suits.’ He paid me 15 grand and I thought I was rich.”

Brown turned down the job initially in order to finish school. Bickerstaff held the position open for him until he completed his final semester Dec. 15, giving several assistant coaches the tasks of breaking down game film until Brown arrived.

Unlike today’s video coordinators around the league, who don’t work with tape anymore, Brown worked with two clunky decks. If he needed to make a tape of all the Nuggets’ fastbreak baskets, he watched the game tape and put it together.

If he needed to make a tape of all their plays when throwing the ball inside to their big guys, he had to watch the whole tape over again and put together that tape. It was arduous, time-consuming and thankless work.

Patrick O’Keefe, the Lakers’ video coordinator, works with a laptop and DVDs.

“It’s so advanced now, I have no clue how it works,” Brown said.