The Man Was Born To Coach
March 9, 2009 – 6:24 am by Jimmy Shapiro
He’s 68 years old now and he still hasn’t lost his passion for coaching basketball. Larry Brown has coached 2 college basketball teams, 2 ABA teams and now the Charlotte Bobcats are the ninth NBA team he’s coached. Everywhere he goes (except the New York Knicks, blame Isiah Thomas and Stephon Marbury) there is a definite pattern. His teams all improve pretty quickly, he’ll tinker with the personnel until he gets his type of players, they end up winning more than they lose, and after about four years he’ll start looking for another job.
The Bobcats have been steadily improving winning six straight and are on the cusp of the playoffs. The aforementioned tinkering took place this year with the Bobcats adding Boris Diaw, Raja Bell, DeSagna Diop, and Vladimir Radmonovic.
Larry Brown changed the way I watch basketball. When he coached the Sixers he traded away guys that looked good on paper like Jerry Stackhouse, Jimmy Jackson, Larry Hughes, and Tim Thomas and brought in Theo Ratliff, Aaron McKie, Eric Snow, and Tyrone Hill in their place. At first, I was furious as a Sixers fan, but I learned to analyze players on their defense, their unselfishness, their effort, and their ability to sacrifice their games for the greater good of the team.
Brown joined Primetime with the Pacman on WFNZ in Charlotte on Friday (the win streak was four then, it’s now six).
“I think since the last time I talked to you we’ve gone through a lot of changes. I think Michael and Rod have really changed the roster. When I got the job Michael wanted me to evaluate the players and we were going to go from there. We’ve really made some I think positive moves. We got more depth and guys with a high IQ without giving up young talent. So it’s been pretty positive.”
On the difficulty of coaching new players mid-season:
“It’s been hard from a coaching perspective cause most of the work you get done in the NBA is in the preseason since we play so many games. When you change during the year it’s hard to know what guys are capable of doing. They try every night and that’s been a real plus.”
Things started looking up after they acquired Diaw and Bell:
“With the nucleus we have right now I think we can at least compete with every team we play. We might not be on a par with some but our future is so much brighter. J-Rich was a great player for us, but without a post presence at the time we really didn’t have value for him. We ended up getting two starters for him and Sean Singletary.”
Brown even discussed the video of his fight in college with Duke’s Art Heyman.
Listen to Larry Brown on WFNZ in Charlotte
Tags: basketball interviews, Boris Diaw, Charlotte Bobcats, Larry Brown, Michael Jordan, NBA, Raja Bell, Raymond Felton, sports radio interviews, WFNZ
