Tweet
Originally posted by POJO_Risin
Cavs are going to make a run at Larry Brown for head coach...a smart move...
Cavs are going to make a run at Larry Brown for head coach...a smart move...
Why again, exactly, is Brown revered?
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Bill Livingston
Plain Dealer Columnist
Thank goodness America had Larry Brown, basketball genius, coaching them up last summer in Greece at the Olympic basketball tourna ment.
After all, how could anyone win with Allen Iverson, Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Am are Stoudemire, Dwyane Wade and Shawn Marion on the roster?
If you look at Sports Illustrated's picks for first-, second-, and third-team all-NBA, the aforementioned shirkers, me-firsters, misfits and knuckleheads make up 40 percent of the list. My, what a shabby hand Brown was dealt.
Emeka Okafor, another member of Team USA, is the magazine's choice for Rookie of the Year.
Wade is a key player on the best team in the NBA East, Miami. Stoudemire and Marion have helped give Phoenix the best record in the NBA West. Duncan's Spurs would have had the latter, had he not severely sprained an ankle. The teams of Iverson and James, while disappointing, are still in the playoff chase.
James' Cavaliers are a deeply flawed team. They will play at Larry Brown's Pistons today as big underdogs.
Regardless of result, hold the hosannas to Brown.
The guy he replaced, Rick Carlisle, has done the best coaching job in the NBA.
Carlisle was sacked in what would have been viewed as a disgraceful lack of trust and patience by Pistons General Manager Joe Dumars. . . . except the Pistons, with the critical addition of Rasheed Wallace down the stretch, won the championship under Brown last season.
The nation was informed by the basketball sages that Larry Brown was a coach for the ages. He verified all the platitudes about teamwork and self-sacrifice.
The record says he has one championship in college at Kansas. The NCAA put the Jayhawks on probation right after he left.
He has one in the NBA. The Pistons were a team ready to win, so Brown cooled his chronically meddlesome ways with personnel. The Pistons beat the Pacers in seven games to get to the Finals, then should have swept the dysfunctional Lakers.
This year, both the Pacers and Pistons imploded in the early-season riot in Michigan, but Carlisle's team was devastated by the suspensions that followed. Since the NBA couldn't suspend the drunks and louts in the stands, Carlisle has coached all season without his best player, Ron Artest, and parts of it without almost everyone else. He has done one of the best jobs ever.
In Athens, Brown should have been allowed to choose a shooter as a coach's "wild-card" roster addition. In the absence of such a critical component, he would tell you again and again how the Olympics were the biggest challenge of "his" career. Or that "his" mission was to teach this team how to "Play the Game the Right Way." When it came time to assess responsibility for the bronze medal, "his" butt was going to be covered.
He set the players up to fail by constantly doubting them. When they failed, he was, as his nickname among several NBA types put it, "Larry Blameless."
This isn't about Brown's failure to play James in Greece, although assistant coach Greg Popovich thought James was the best player in practice almost every day.
This is about America's Coach, a man hailed for creating the ultimate example of a team, who yet put the greatest measure of value on his own reputation.
Brown would never have been able to hold the Pacers together. He would have poisoned the locker room when times got tough. It's always all about him.
Comment