San Antonio – It’s closing time for the NBA Finals. But Larry Brown, basketball’s serial lover, doesn’t need to look at the clock on the wall. His heart tells him when to leave.
All Brown has is tonight. Win or lose, it’s time for the coach to kiss Detroit goodbye and head on down the road.
How can we be so sure? With the game and the season on the line, Brown recently stood in the Detroit huddle, and rather than scribble another X or O, he sent the Pistons a Hallmark card full of hugs and kisses.
“Hey, I didn’t tell you,” Brown declared to his players as a TV camera eavesdropped. “I love you guys.”
Not to doubt Brown’s sincerity, but here is a 64-year-old man who still confuses love with passion.
Love endures. The emotion Brown professed to the Pistons meant about as much as a promise of eternal devotion on prom night.
Will Game 7 against the Spurs be the last passionate act of this peripatetic coach? “I don’t even want to think about that,” Brown said Wednesday.
Deep down in his soul, what Brown loves is basketball. Then, now and forever.
But, for a coach who desperately needs to be wanted, jobs are like kisses.
And Brown can’t wait for the thrill of the next one.
Before the Pistons’ gutsy victory in Game 6, which kept his relationship with Detroit alive for at least one more night, Brown said: “I look forward and not back, so this has been a pretty special last run.”
Should we take that as a hint? Or was Brown merely messing with our emotions again?
Nobody cares more about the game than Brown does, which explains why no-nonsense basketball guys such as Gregg Popovich and Doug Moe endure his self-absorbed obsessions through the years.
When Brown yammers about playing the right way, however, it’s emotional blackmail to do it his way out of respect to a coach who regards himself as the last curator of all that remains good and pure in the sport.
“He’s more passionate about this game than anybody I’ve ever been around – player, coach, fan, anything,” said Detroit guard Chauncey Billups, who gladly drinks from the Kool-Aid poured by Brown. “I don’t know anybody who loves the game like he does and cares about the integrity of the game like he does.”
How Brown toys with the emotions and egos of his players is a clever gimmick. He wants players to feel his misery and ropes the gullible into feeling sorry for him when his team loses. Poor, little Larry is a passive-aggressive genius. But all these guilt trips slowly grow heavy over the long haul.
What general manager Joe Dumars has put together in Detroit is bigger than any one person. The secret to the success of the Pistons is stubborn defiance against the NBA’s cult of personality, in which individual players and coaches are marketed as larger than life.
“That’s the fight that goes on between basketball and show business,” Dumars said. “We’re about basketball and winning championships.”
Brown sells melodrama as much as “Desperate Housewives.” Basketball is a series of affairs. It’s always passionate. Always entertaining. Always rewarding.
But even if Brown truly wants to remain on the Detroit bench, the Pistons should politely tell him: No, thanks.
“The players in that locker room would allow any coach that cares about the game and just cares about coaching to step in and be comfortable,” Brown said. You could almost hear his chair squeaking with a gentle shove toward the door. Think Dumars has the résumés of Nate McMillan or Flip Saunders on file?
A doctor will determine his future in coaching, Brown insists. Anybody who has followed Brown’s crooked steps down an arena hall can see his physical ailments are painfully real. But one touch of a doctor’s stethoscope will reveal what is in Brown’s heart.
“He’s in love with this game, man,” Billups said. “I don’t see him not being around the game. I can’t see it.”
What Brown has given Detroit is real. These Pistons could not have won a championship or be in position to defend their title without him.
But it’s time for basketball’s Romeo to fall in love anew.
Cleveland or New York or some other desperate city on the NBA map needs him more than the Pistons do.
The only prison that can hold Brown is his heart.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
