Letting a Good Man (and Bad Coach) Go: Cavs Fire Brown

His firing is official.

The Mike Brown era as Cavaliers head coach finds it's way into the team's history today, as just another coach who couldn't bring this franchise to the "Promised Land."

No one should have been surprised Brown  was fired.

Rumors about his shaky future swirled around NBA circles like sands in a windstorm. The consensus was that he would be fired sooner instead of later, because there was no reason to dangle a good man's fortunes on a tightrope for long.

Mike Brown  is a good man, but he was a lousy coach.

I once thought Brown was the right man to lead the Cavaliers to glory.

He had the support of the game's best player, and other men seemed to buy into what Brown was peddling. 

Yet what did Brown in, was his inability to put the X's and O's together.

He was a coach who harped about defense, but it was his sieve-like defense that led to the disastrous ending to the 2009-10 season.

Endings like this one have become familiar in Cleveland. Promises, promises, promises, but no good ever seems to come from them, regardless of how hopeful they appear at first glance.

Plenty of hope was attached to these promises.

General manager Danny Ferry had given Brown the expensive pieces that should have taken the team deeper into the postseason.

He had Shaquille O'Neal, Antawn Jamison, Anthony Parker, Jamario Moon and Leon Powe to weave into his player rotation.

But Brown seemed confused about how to use this embarrassment of riches wisely, and when he couldn't make adjustments on the fly against the Celtics, he had proved what many of his critics had long thought: He was in waters too deep for him to swim in.

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