MIKE BROWN HAS BEEN FIRED FOUR TIMES AND MUST AVOID INFAMY IN NEW YORK
Of all people to seek an NBA championship, it’s the man who coached LeBron and Kobe and couldn’t win with either, leaving him one last chance with the Knicks in an Eastern Conference that is winnable
Mike Brown has coached LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis. He also has been fired twice by the Cavaliers, once by the Lakers and once by the Kings. If he is fired by the Knicks, he’ll be abandoned five times, apparently tying him for the most ziggies in NBA history with Dick Motta, who left the Bulls, Mavericks, Kings, Nuggets and Bullets before they were the Wizards.
Still, Motta did win one championship, as did Michael Malone, Frank Vogel and Mike Budenholzer, all fired once or twice since their glory days. Brown, as a head coach, can be described as Motta without the ring. The stiffs of New York, who haven’t won a title since 1973 and lost in the Eastern Conference finals last season, would like to think this is the time for Brown to be Larry and not Charlie.
If not, they’ll have the least satisfied coach in the history of professional basketball.
They will hammer him appropriately.
“Nobody has any bigger expectations than I do. My expectations are high,” Brown said Tuesday. “This is the Knicks and Madison Square Garden. It's iconic. … I love and embrace the expectations that come along with it.”
Jim Dolan still runs an alien ship inside the Garden. His president, Leon Rose, tried to pry Jason Kidd from Dallas and failed. He called his close pal, Jay Wright, who wouldn’t budge from TV duties to renew college acquaintances with Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges. He tried Ime Udoka, who signed a big deal with Houston. He tried Billy Donovan, who remained in Chicago with an owner who never will fire him. He didn’t try Dan Hurley, who would have made sense after growing up across the Hudson River. He actually had people feeling sorry for the dismissed Tom Thibodeau, who found playoff success but actually is Dick Motta without a Finals berth. Brown is the choice, though not everyone is convinced he’s better.
“The league is the league — there’s always going to be ebbs and flows in terms of how the hiring and firing process goes,” he said, having been through it all.
It’s possible Brown is the perfect assistant coach and probably isn’t ready for a media market as brusque as New York. He owns three rings with the Warriors and a fourth from the Spurs. With those teams, he coached Steph Curry, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker. There is a reason why Steve Kerr and Gregg Popovich keep culture-elevating him into a fifth head coaching position. Last year, after receiving a raise to $8.5 million in Sacramento, Brown seemed ready to lead the Kings to a prominent spot in the Western Conference. The star players didn’t respect him enough.
One day, he told Fox: “If you don’t play hard every possession, we’re not gonna win.” He made the same comment to Sabonis and DeMar DeRozan. “You guys are the engine that makes this team run,” Brown said. “If you don’t play like every possession matters, how can we expect (the role players) to do the same?”
Next thing you knew, Brown was canned with a 13-18 record, weeks before Fox was traded to San Antonio. A night before his Fourth Ziggy, Brown lamented his team’s ninth loss after leading in the fourth quarter and blamed Fox, who had told Green on a podcast that he needed a team that would “compete at a high level.” Why wasn’t Fox guarding Detroit’s Jaden Ivey on a four-point play, fouling him as he made a killer three?
“You should be hugged up to your man at the 3-point line,” Brown said. “Everybody should, and why there was a closeout by Fox, I'm not sure. I got to go back and watch the tape. But for sure 100 percent, we told our guys, can't give up a 3, can't give up a 3, can't give up a 3, stay on the high side, stay on the high side.”
He wound up on the low side, despite winning Coach of the Year honors the previous season. Brown needed several days before accepting a deal from the Knicks, bringing him $40 million over four seasons. “Mike has coached on the biggest stages in our sport and brings championship pedigree to our organization,” Rose said. “His experience leading the bench during the NBA Finals, winning four titles as an assistant coach, and his ability to grow and develop players will all help us as we aim to bring a championship to New York for our fans.”
Unlike Fox, Brunson and his teammates won’t slack off. The Knicks are hungry but need a potent coach to push them past the Cavaliers in a waning Eastern Conference. They should be better with the ball and defensively. The starters won’t be overextended with too many minutes, the fault of Thibodeau until he dies. They’ve added Jordan Clarkson to a group that expects Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns to push for the No. 1 playoff seed. Brown has been in so many Finals, as the head coach and assistant, and will demand what is necessary. He is 55. He cannot be fired a fifth time.
“At the end of the day, it's about relationships,” he said. “It's about trust. Once you grow those relationships, then you can talk openly about anything that you need to go in the direction you need to go. I'm going to be open and honest with them, and I'm sure they're going to be open and honest with me.”
He is the only man on Earth who was in charge of LeBron and Kobe. That matters, I suppose.
But neither won.
###
Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.