Larry Brown is coaching his eighth NBA team. The previous seven improved by an average of nearly nine wins per season in his first year.
The Hall of Fame coach even took the usually hapless Los Angeles Clippers to the playoffs after a 16-year hiatus. But Brown says he’s never faced a coaching challenge like the one he has now with the New York Knicks.
At most of his previous stops, expectations were usually low, at least initially. But in New York, that’s never the case, even though the Knicks won only 33 games a year ago and haven’t advanced to the second round of the playoffs since 2000. That’s because the media spotlight in New York burns brighter than anywhere else.
“This seems to be the biggest challenge with the environment you’re doing it in,” said Brown, 65, who traded in a championship team in Detroit for a rebuilding job in his hometown.
Why?
Oddly, that’s just how the vagabond Brown likes it. The NBA’s fourth all-time winningest coach led Detroit to the 2003-04 NBA title and the Finals last season. But in the midst of playoffs, he took the spotlight away from the Pistons when his interest in leaving became public.
First it was rumored he was leaving for Cleveland to be team president. While that never transpired, the furor about his longing to leave led the Pistons to let Brown go July 19 after the two sides reached agreement on a $7 million severance package. Pistons owner Bill Davidson called Brown disloyal after the ugly divorce.
On July 28, he was hired as coach of the Knicks for his “dream” job, which is what Brown called it months earlier, for a five-year contract at upwards of $50 million.
“What happened, happened,” Brown said. “I’m not looking back. If I do, it’s to remember I had two great years there (in Detroit). It was the greatest experience anybody could possibly have. You can coach your whole life and I don’t think you have an opportunity to coach a team like that.”
San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, whose team defeated the Pistons in this year’s Finals, wasn’t surprised Brown longed for the Knicks’ job.
“What he loves more than anything is a challenge and an opportunity to start teaching all over again from the ground up,” Popovich said. “It’s his favorite thing in basketball. There it was. And then there is something in his heart and in his blood about going back home that made it even more attractive. But it’s basically that challenge and the teaching opportunity to do it again.”
The Knicks Brown inherited are much different than the 33-49 team of last season. Sharpshooter Allan Houston has retired, and Kurt Thomas, Tim Thomas, Michael Sweetney and Jerome Williams are gone, too. New to the team are big men Eddy Curry, Jerome James, Antonio Davis and rookie Channing Frye, giving the Knicks one of the tallest rosters in the league. And with guards Stephon Marbury and Jamal Crawford supplying the scoring punch, the Knicks appear to have the talent to compete for a playoff spot.
Which would fit the typical Brown first-year turnaround.
