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BlueSeats
Posts: 27272
Alba Posts: 41
Joined: 11/6/2005
Member: #1024
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In all actuality Brown typically produces an increase in wins his first season. His teams may struggle early, but they make up for it after guys "get it' by finishing strong.
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Knicks President Isiah Thomas says the poor showing hasn't shaken his confidence in Brown because he's looking at the bigger picture.
"He believes that he makes and can make a difference at the end of games, and he can," Thomas says. "What Coach is doing with our guys and what I'm seeing now is some semblance of a team playing better.
{b]"I didn't hire Larry Brown for this year. We hired him for five years. We knew we had a lot of young players. We wanted him to teach them to play."
Despite the Knicks' struggles, the feeling around the NBA is that Brown will get it turned around. Many say it will be sooner rather than later, noting his track record. They are mindful that in his previous stops, he traditionally got off to rocky starts. But by season's end his teams were forces to be reckoned with.
Davis, a member of Brown's Pacers teams, constantly reminds his teammates of how Brown turned around things in Indiana. "From the outside looking in it may look helter-skelter," Davis says. "Until he figures out what's the best way for this team to be successful, he's going to keep trying different things. I go around preaching for guys to be patient."
Pacers CEO Donnie Walsh says the Knicks' recent six-game winning streak is a sign of what's ahead if the players will stay the course.
"When they hired him and people called me, I said that in the beginning you guys will be writing stuff (like), 'Oh, God. It's awful. It's terrible.' Then all of a sudden, they'll start winning," Walsh says. "That's what I'm seeing. It doesn't surprise me."
Walsh, who also was Brown's assistant with the Denver Nuggets, says Brown's teams usually struggle early because of the way Brown sees the game. "He has a definite idea of how he wants to play, and the players don't. He's trying to get them into a picture that he sees that they don't see yet."
Marbury can attest to that. He never fully adjusted to Brown's system during the 2004 Summer Olympics. However, he says he has a better grasp now of what Brown is trying to get done.
"Coach's visions are there, and he's like, 'We got to do this right now,' " Marbury says. "We're not up to speed with him right then and there. But ... the only way we're going to go forward is by having confidence in him."
Says Brown: "They're starting to figure it out. I see a light at the end of the tunnel. I don't know how long this tunnel is. (But) I'm really encouraged with what I'm seeing."
Turnaround king
Larry Brown has the reputation of making swift progress in the teams he takes on. The record improved for all but one of the seven professional teams he coached for the first time from the start of a season over the previous year (an average of 11.3 more wins):
1styear Team Record Prev.year's record Change
1972-73 Carolina (ABA) 57-27 35-49 +22
1974-75 Denver (ABA) 65-19 37-47 +28
1981-82 New Jersey 44-38 24-58 +20
1988-89 San Antonio 21-61 31-51 -10
1993-94 Indiana 47-35 41-41 +6
1997-98 Philadelphia 31-51 22-60 +9
2003-04 Detroit 54-28 50-32 +4
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In truth, I think a lot of guys were getting it (Lee, Frye, Nate, Malik, Curry, Richardson, Qyntel) before things feel apart with Marbury's injury, ADs suspension and trade, the harassment suit, and then the Marbury mutiny. But the guys who were capable of getting it simply didn't comprise the power base of the team (Marbury) and team chemistry was simply too fractured by then. Just as it was the year before.[/b] Diverse agendas, lack of caring, personal sob stories, managerial distractions, turf wars, etc, were simply too great to overcome.
Brown's detractors seem to insinuate Brown came here with the intention to uproot Isiah and sabotaged the team to do so. I just don't believe that. I believe that here, like everywhere else, Brown would have turned things around pretty quickly were it not for the resistance of a few key protagonists. When it became clear those protagonists would not stand down, and would not be removed, is when Brown's efforts became futile and his departure a forgone conclusion.
People try to suggest last season was a uniquely Larry Brown experience, like the kind of thing that could only occur because of his defects, but the truth of the story is that last year had as much in common with Isiah's team's history with Lenny Wilkens and Herb Williams, as it did with any of Brown's other stops.
The year prior Brown was in the finals for the second consecutive year and the 3rd time in 5 years, while the Knicks under Lenny and Herb were already beating their path to the gutter with abominable chemistry, disinterest, horrid effort and woeful execution.
Knicks record since Marbury's "I'm the best comments": 45-90
[Edited by - blueSeats on 09-21-2006 12:24 PM]
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9/21/2006 5:57 AM