Larry Brown On The Move

[Diamond Girl]

Pistons: Brown parting ways

by Fanball Staff - Fanball.com
Monday, July 18, 2005

News
Sources close to the Pistons and Larry Brown situation said that the two are parting ways, according the ESPN.com's Marc Stein. The Pistons and Brown moved closer Monday to a buyout of Brown's contract, which has three years left at $18 million, according to the sources, but the specifics of the buyout are unknown.

Views
This news should come as no surprise if you follow the NBA and, more importantly, Larry Brown. Although it's unknown if Brown will spend time away from coaching, our thought is there's an opening with the Knicks that might interest him. You can bet ex-Timberwolves coach Flip Saunders' cell phone has been blowing up with calls from the Pistons.

[Diamond Girl]

Brown, Thomas Discuss Knicks Coaching Job
By CHRIS SHERIDAN, AP Basketball Writer


NEW YORK -- Larry Brown and Isiah Thomas sat together for four hours, their first face-to-face meeting to discuss whether the 64-year-old is healthy enough and interested enough to become coach of the New York Knicks.

The meeting took place Thursday night in eastern Long Island at Brown's summer home, and the sides plan to speak again soon.

"They had very positive conversations and are going to continue to talk," Knicks spokesman Joe Favorito said Friday.

Thomas waited patiently while the saga of Brown's departure from the Detroit Pistons played out, and Brown is clearly his choice to take over leadership of a rebuilding franchise that's been mediocre at best during the past several seasons.

As presently constructed, the Knicks don't fit the typical Brown mold.

Their point guard, Stephon Marbury, clashed with Brown when they were together on the U.S. Olympic team, and their two veteran starting centers from last season -- Nazr Mohammed and Kurt Thomas -- have been traded.

Aside from Quentin Richardson and Jamal Crawford, both with low career shooting percentages, the Knicks' corps of shooting guards includes gimpy-kneed Allan Houston, who could be waived before November in a luxury-tax saving move, and the over-the-hill Penny Hardaway, playing out the final season of a long-term contract that pays him more than $14 million next season.

Tim Thomas, a career underachiever, is New York's best small forward, while the front line will be manned by work-in-progress Michael Sweetney and free agent signee-to-be Jerome James, who brings an underachiever reputation along with him from Seattle.

And then there's defense, another key facet of all Brown's teams. The Knicks don't play it very well, and they also fail in the toughness category that Brown's Pistons teams so embodied.

Still, Brown loves challenges as much as he craves attention and new jobs.

His picture has been plastered across the back pages of the New York tabloids, and he even was interviewed and photographed at a boat harbor after returning from a leisurely afternoon with his family on the waters off Long Island, N.Y.

Photographers followed Brown's wife, Shelly, after she picked up Thomas from a small airport Thursday evening.

"If I'm speaking to them, I obviously have an interest," Brown said at a children's basketball clinic he conducted Thursday, according to several media reports. "But my concern is what is best for my family and if I can do it mentally."

Brown would be coaching his eighth NBA team if he takes over the Knicks, but he has expressed reservations in recent days about possibly nudging New York interim coach Herb Williams out of a job.

"I don't want to string this thing out for Herb or their organization," Brown said. "But the biggest thing, to be honest with you, is I've got to get it straight with my family what I'm going to do."

Brown's relationship with Marbury also will be a significant factor. Brown prefers his point guards to act as offensive initiators rather than scorers, but Marbury's style of play was at odds with Brown's philosophy.

"We've basically been trying to just pass, pass, pass to the point where we've been overpassing, because we're trying to play the right way, the way our coach wants to play," Marbury said upon his arrival in Belgrade last summer after the U.S. team struggled in tuneup games against Italy and Germany. "But there has to -- there's going to be -- a break-off, where we're just going to have to take those shots that we normally take and make."

When those comments were relayed to Brown later that day in lobby bar of the Belgrade Hyatt, the coach was so incensed that he stormed off to his room before sending assistant coach Gregg Popovich back downstairs to locate a copy of the story containing Marbury's quote.

Marbury ended up staying on the team, and Brown stuck with him as his starting point guard rather than turning that job over to Dwyane Wade.

Marbury struggled defensively against opposing point guards Carlos Arroyo and Sarunas Jasikevicius in opening-round losses to Puerto Rico and Lithuania. But by the time the U.S. team reached the quarterfinals, Brown had loosened his controls on Marbury to such a degree that Marbury broke the men's U.S. Olympic scoring record shared by Spencer Haywood and Charles Barkley by getting 31 points in a victory over Spain that moved the United States into the semifinals.

"Playing under coach Brown is not easy," Marbury said after the victory over Spain. "It's tough because he demands so much from you -- to try to play your game and try to do what he wants, and have that all combine in one has been a challenge to me. But it's been a great challenge."

Earlier this summer, Thomas vehemently denied a report that the Knicks were shopping Marbury in trade talks.

The team president has tried to foster a close relationship with Marbury, his neighbor in suburban New York, although Thomas did say at the close of last season that he was angry enough to trade his own mother.

[Diamond Girl]

Knicks Introduce Larry Brown As Coach
By CHRIS SHERIDAN, AP Basketball Writer

NEW YORK - Larry Brown is employed again, and the New York Knicks might just become a team to watch after nearly a half-decade of malaise and mediocrity. Brown's "dream job" became a reality Thursday when the Knicks introduced him as the 22nd coach in franchise history.

"When I was announced as the Olympics coach, I thought that was the single greatest honor I could ever have, but I think standing here in Madison Square Garden with Isiah and my family here, this tops it all," Brown said.

Not since Pat Riley took over the team in 1991 has there been such a summertime buzz surrounding the Knicks to match what's been transpiring lately.

"Welcome Back Larry!" flashed the marquee in front of the Garden.

Less than 10 days after his divorce from the Detroit Pistons, Brown has made the Knicks relevant in the local sports scene again, and the fans who have watched the franchise stumble and slump into insignificance finally have something to give them some promise.

"We are extremely lucky and very fortunate to have a man grace our sidelines such as Larry Brown," team president Isiah Thomas said.

Sure, the Knicks' roster is sub-par compared to the top echelon of teams in the NBA's Eastern Conference. But with Brown's proven track record of turning losers into winners, those feelings of hope have some legitimacy behind them.

"I can't promise wins and losses, but I promise every single day, as a staff, we'll do our very best to make people proud of our franchise and our players and the way we play," Brown said.

The Knicks were Brown's favorite team when he was growing up in Brooklyn, and the eighth stop on his NBA coaching carousel will truly be a "dream job" - just what Brown called it earlier this year.

He'll join a long list of distinguished coaches - including Joe Lapchick, Red Holzman, Riley and Lenny Wilkens - who have guided one of the NBA's charter franchises.

In 22 seasons as a professional coach, Brown has compiled a 987-741 record. The title he won with the Pistons in 2004 was his only NBA championship.

July has turned out to be a whirlwind month for the coach who will be 65 by the time training camp begins. He began it at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where he underwent surgery for a bladder problem, then told the Pistons he was prepared to return.

He and Glass met with Detroit owner Bill Davidson and team president Joe Dumars, a get-together Brown originally thought had gone well. But Davidson, peeved that Brown had spoken to the Cleveland Cavaliers during the playoffs, had grown tired of the drama that constantly surrounds the high-maintenance coach.

Just hours after the Pistons finished a severance agreement with Brown that paid him $7 million, Thomas picked up the phone and made it known that New York had a serious interest.

Meetings with owner James Dolan, interim coach Herb Williams and Madison Square Garden president Steve Mills followed, and Brown gave his agent the go-ahead to hammer out the contract language.

Brown becomes the team's fourth coach in less than a year, following Williams, Wilkens and Don Chaney. The Knicks haven't been to the finals since 1999 under Jeff Van Gundy and haven't won a title since Holzman coached in 1973.

Brown takes over a roster that Thomas has transformed into a mix of youngsters and high-salaried veterans. Turning them into a winner will be the latest challenge for Brown in a nomadic NBA career that has included stints with the Philadelphia 76ers, Indiana Pacers, Los Angeles Clippers, San Antonio Spurs, New Jersey Nets and Denver Nuggets.

Brown also coached Kansas to an NCAA title in 1988, had stints with UCLA and the Carolina Cougars of the ABA, and led the 2004 U.S. Olympic team that finished a disappointing third. Part of that roster included Knicks guard Stephon Marbury, who clashed with Brown last summer. Marbury has already publicly endorsed Brown's hiring, and Brown has said he will have no problem coaching the enigmatic guard.

After Brown missed 17 games last season due to a hip replacement operation that led to the bladder problem, his wife, Shelly, had been concerned about her husband's health. He underwent his third surgery in nine months shortly after the Pistons lost Game 7 of the NBA Finals to the San Antonio Spurs.

Doctors told Brown he needed rest, and he and his wife have decided he'll get enough of it during the next two months before training camp begins.

[Motown Honey]

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