Larry Brown Ruins Everything

I do not care how anyone feels about “legendary coach” Larry Brown. I think he is not a good professional coach. There, I said it. Complain away. Larry Brown is an egomaniac, who only won an NBA championship because someone wouldn’t let him be Larry Brown.

And just to prove a point, I am not even going to include his disastrous time with the Knicks.

Brown is an illustrious basketball coach, even though in 30 years, he won only three conference championships; all three of them in the last 10 years. He won his only NBA Championship with the 2003-04 Detroit Pistons. I am not impressed by a man who piled on three finals appearances, even if all three were in the last decade.

Brown is the Bill Parcells of basketball. He goes to teams with this whole “they will be better long after I’m gone” mantra. In addition to being egotistical and stupid, it immediately sets his image wherever he goes as “I am the guy here, not you.”

With this mentality, Brown has demanded that the trigger be pulled on some of the dumbest trades ever, including last night’s trade of Jason Richardson. In fact, the only times that Brown has achieved serious coaching success (I define serious coaching success as making the NBA Finals.), was when he backed off and left it up to the general managers to do the work (he followed this up by pulling the whole “why am I cooking if I can’t buy any of the groceries” spiel.)

In 2001, Brown publicly criticized Allen Iverson on about 19 different occasions and tried to trade half of his team. That year, Iverson was the NBA scoring leader and the NBA MVP.

The Sixers struck gold in February of that season as well. Dikembe Mutumbo was having the best season of his career in Atlanta. Keep in mind, this was before the Hawks changed hands and wanted to pay their players. So, the Hawks gave Mutumbo to the Sixers for an injured Theo Ratliff, and the Sixers went to the Finals, where they were dominated by the Lakers.

Brown then served as Rick Carlisle’s replacement in Detroit; where he literally sat back and coached Carlisle and Dumars’ team to a Championship. The Pistons did absolutely nothing different than they did a season before, and Dumars was able to land Rasheed Wallace, who ended up being the missing piece.

In what I consider the Matt Doherty or Tony Dungy Rule, Larry Brown just strolled into Detroit and won with someone else’s team. I don’t consider that good coaching. The last time Brown was a good coach was when he coached in college.

But, what irks me the most is the journeyman mantra that Brown has. For whatever reason, people think it is cool to document the fact that he has coached more than two heaping handfuls of professional and collegiate teams like he is some kind of basketball ambassador, spreading goodwill wherever he goes. Has it occurred to anyone that he might just be a huge prick that can’t hold a job?

Larry Brown is so lucky that he ran into Joe Dumars at the right time, because that will be the memory that he clings to for the rest of his life.