Posted by BlueSeats:
It's clear from statements by Marbury and isiah that Larry was promised significant control over personnel that was rescinded somewhere along the way. (Isiah said on WFAN that any players who don't conform to the coaches way will get moved, and Marbury told us Larry told him he had complete control over personnel.)
it wasn't supposed to be such a battle for power. Does anyone really think when Brown was being courted by isiah he was told he could only add more me-first offensive players and lose no one but 2nd round, second year Ariza?
Brown will argue that promises where made to him that were not fulfilled, and that his authority with players was undermined by Isiah in conjunction with his star player who was "in bed" with him. All this contributed to a "circus" atmosphere throughout the season - which was not helped by a harassment case involving the GM, which rendered neither Isiah or Brown secure in their positions.
Brown will offer to "subpoena" multiple players (I could evidence as much from at least as many as Curry, Jamal, Q, Malik, Robinson) and assistant coaches (unidentified) who will testify that no single person is to blame for the outcome of the season, that management and players where never on the same page. We have quote after quote of players saying that the coach is not the one out on the floor, that the players have to get it done, that the coach never gave up on them or stopped coaching, and that we have too many players who are out for themselves and not the team or for wins.
Brown will argue that his intentions were to establish authority from the coaching rank, which has been absent from this team throughout Isiah's tenure. He will argue that he was hired to participating in the restructuring and rebuilding of this team over the long haul and that isiah and Dolan told him they understood the first year could be rocky, and that his intention wasn't to sabotage the season but to mentally test his players, and to "reach" some of his more unreachable subject, but that far too many failed the test or failed to be reached. He will argue he does this everywhere he goes and there is nothing in his contract against this. He will argue that all this was discussed with isiah, Mills and dolan in their regular meetings, and should have been of no surprise to any of them.
He will argue that if the case against him is that he did a bad job coaching, or that he "lost his players" (same has been said against McMillian and Carlisle, who've retained their jobs) he pleads "no contest", but that the matter of a breach of contract is a farce.
Stern will also note that many of the Knicks complaints about Brown (like wanting to make-over the roster and chirping to the press) should have been known by management, especially someone like Isiah with his close ties to Dumars and Indiana, former stops of Brown.
I really see the Knicks only chance against Brown being on the matter of arguing with Marbury in the press. dolan says it's MSg policy not to communicate with Steph through the media. But whether that "policy" was written into Brown's contract remains to be seen. And why it's being enforced upon Brown and not Marbury is equally ambiguous, especially when one considers that Marbury initiated most, if not all, such outbreaks since the winning streak.
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Personally I think Isiah and Dolan should own up to doing either another poor coaching selection - at best - or a poor managerial job of their crew after the fact. Power struggles between coaches and GMs are common in this league, as we might remember between van Gundy and Grunfeld. If ever coach's contract is over turned because he doesn't coach the way a wannabe coach/GM wants him to this league will be sunk in a swamp of litigation within a decade.
You're entire argument is flawed in that you don't know exactly what the Knicks position will be. You're making the case that Brown was promised this and that, but that's not the issue. The issue is what do the Knicks feel LB failed to live up to in terms of his contract with them. I've never seen his contract and don't know what's in it. I doubt that the Knicks will say he was fired cuz he didn't win.
I'd advise EVERYONE to go back and read the transcript of the Dolan and Thomas interview after they fired LB. I know its their side of the story, but its also very telling in regards to why they feel justified in not paying him.
http://www.nba.com/knicks/news/dolanthomas_060626.html
Q: Why did you fire Larry?
James Dolan: I don’t want to get overly specific about it. It is at least my contention that Larry never intended to coach this team beyond this season. We had issues throughout the season with our coach. We had issues with our press policy. Let me start off by saying something about that. When I went to Larry Brown’s house, I think [media] were outside. We had a very specific discussion before we hired Larry about the press policy. The press policy basically is that we never communicate to our employees through the press. We don’t use the press as the medium by which we talk to each other. I’m sure all of you remember the days of Jeff Van Gundy and Ernie Grunfeld, and the circus that that was, and that’s how we came to that decision about that policy. I think it’s a well founded policy. Larry absolutely agreed to that policy and said he completely understood it and thought it was the right thing and understood that we had a press department and division headed by Mr. Watkins here, and that he and his team would be with Larry whenever he had press availability, and that was no problem with Larry and he completely understood that. To go into the season and so quickly start having our players be talked to through the press was a surprise.
Q: How do you know his intent?
James Dolan: I think that there is a stack of evidence that high. On top of which after a month of this where Isiah went down and talked to him, Steve went down and talked to him and finally I went down and talked to him. We went through what the press policy is and how to prepare and answer questions so you don’t say something that you don’t intend to say. I have to reiterate my contention that it was intentional. Second, it may be one of the more disturbing things here, is that we couldn’t get Larry to focus on his job. Larry wanted to focus on Isiah’s job and in fact we had several instances where Larry goes and talks to a GM of a team or an assistant GM of a team, and starts to negotiate a trade. We actually had two instances where Isiah was negotiating with a team and the GM said, ‘That’s great, but I got a better offer from your coach.’ We brought this to Larry, we talked to him. I talked to him about it and said it can’t be - you have to focus on coaching. Tell us what you want in the team and Isiah will do his job and go out and get the players that you want. We actually went through a series of meetings on this, discussing what the makeup of the team would be. I attended the first couple of them to make sure that everything was on track with it and continuing to reiterate to both Isiah and Larry, but particularly to Larry, to do your job, not the other guy’s job. We continued to have these problems. In fact we continued to have these problems going up past the end of the season. I have this piece of paper in front of me and I’ll tell you why in a minute. Larry obviously lost the team. I think you guys who are the beat writers probably know that as well as anybody else. It is no surprise that he lost the team because when you talk to your players through the press rather than talking to them directly, it creates animosity and a lack of respect and I was also faced finally with the situation where towards the end where Larry was no longer talking to his boss and literally refused to talk to his boss. He did things like have his secretary return his phone call or his agent. The reason that I have this paper in front of you is because we went into that meeting on Thursday, and I’m telling you, that I went into that meeting hoping, thinking that we were going to have Larry Brown as our coach next year, that there was a way that this could work and I literally wrote down how we can make it work, how we can get past the problems. To be honest with you, if we could get past the problems, and we could get back the guy who is supposed to be the Hall of Fame coach that was going to nurture our team, do the things he said he was going to do when he came on - that we had every reason to expect that he was going to do and to be honest, why anybody would pay someone $10 million to do this job was to expect that he was going to help build this team. We were rebuilding. We still are rebuilding, and that Larry Brown had a reputation of being able to build, and Larry Brown agreed that that was what he was going to do. So my thought was that going into this meeting was to if we can get back to that person, if we can get that person into coaching the team and get that person to cooperate with the rest of the organization and be part of the organization that it would be a great thing. And no, I did not want to have to pay him $40 million. But I have to tell you what happened in that meeting. I couldn’t get Larry to acknowledge one of these things. Not one of them. I had a plan if he was willing to acknowledge them, how he would correct them, how he would go forward, how he would stay coach and I actually told him at the meeting, ‘I’m here to figure out how to go forward together. I need you to acknowledge these things.’ They are not in our head, they are not fictional, these things happen and they can’t continue to happen and have us go forward. He would not acknowledge that they happened. He would not acknowledge that there was a problem, and in fact said that we had to change out essentially all but five or six players of the team and proposed that we take on another $180 million of salary. We’re talking over $200 million. He wanted those five or six players waived.
Q: Is that why you knew he didn’t had any intention of wanting to come back?
James Dolan: He knew that wasn’t possible. Essentially that’s what happened, after the season ended, and we met with you guys, and we brought in Larry afterwards - he told us this afterwards - I think this is how this rumor started. He essentially told us that if you don’t do this stuff, if you don’t use the midlevel exception, and trade away your expiring contracts to take on more dough, then we must not really want to improve the team and we must not really want him as a coach.
Isiah Thomas: He said that at the end of the season. If we weren’t willing to change the players and trade the contracts what we had this year, then what we had this year is what you are going to see next year.
James Dolan: At the Thursday meeting when we told him that we didn’t know we could make all of those trades, he said then, ‘Well, if you are telling me that you are going to make me play all these players, I am going to cut and waive five to six players, equaling almost $180 million straight dollars.’ Look at it this way, he can’t because he is not in my shoes. He is saying, ‘I am going to make you fire me.’
There are some other interesting points they brought up as well:
Q: You knew what kind of players Larry wanted before you hired him.
Isiah Thomas: We were moving towards that. When Larry got here, we had Tim Thomas, Sweetney, the guys that we were taking into the camp and then we had a chance to trade for Eddy Curry and Larry was heavily involved in that trade. Then we brought in Qyntel Woods. He liked all three rookies that we drafted. He likes Jackie Butler and he was on and off about Quentin Richardson, Malik Rose and we go and we make the trade for Francis, Jalen Rose. He and Marbury: one day they were together and then the next day, they weren’t. Some days Marbury could play for him, some days he couldn’t. So when you talk about the scope of the roster…
Q: You thought Steve Francis was a Larry Brown-type player?
James Dolan: Larry Brown thought Steve Francis was a Larry Brown type of player.
Isiah Thomas: At that point in time, we were chasing Earl Watson.
James Dolan: When you sign a contract with a guy like we signed with Larry, you are really - we were invested in him, significantly invested in him. And in fact we made both the Steve Francis and Jalen Rose trades based on him. It should have been a real re-affirmation to Larry Brown that this team was willing to do the things necessary in order to get him the team that he wants.
There's more that they said as well. I think that in the end Stern will split the baby a bit and pay LB, but not 100% of what he's owed.
9/17/2006 8:09 AM
