Brown needs to go now
By IAN O'CONNOR
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: April 21, 2006)

GREENBURGH — Larry Brown needs to be fired. Bought out, forced to resign, terminated with cause, whatever the PR guys want to call it. Brown is the biggest free-agent bust in the history of New York sports, if only because the Jets never gave Rich Kotite a contract worth 50 million bucks.

The Knicks need to get rid of him today, not tomorrow.

Never mind what Isiah Thomas said while presenting a false unified front with a coach he can't stand. Trust me on this: Thomas wants Brown to disappear as much as Bud Selig wants Barry Bonds to disappear.

On his $10 million wage, Brown earned $434,783 for every victory he delivered to his hometown team. He said he was embarrassed by the 23-59 record, just not embarrassed enough to send back the hometown checks.

Here's what the Knicks need to do: Tell Brown they don't want him anymore. Tell him they will gladly match the $7 million payout the Pistons gave him to get lost. Tell him they will leak their overly generous designs to the news media if he refuses to take the money and run.

That's the way Brown plays the game, anyway, executing more back-door cuts than three generations of Princeton Tigers. Thomas diminished his own power base and betrayed his own oversized ego to hire Brown, and the coach thanked him by ridiculing the roster at every turn.

Brown spent more time trying to get Thomas fired this year than he did trying to settle on a rotation. The Knicks fielded 42 different starting lineups, some of the road lineups based on the players' birthplaces and college affiliations. Never has a Hall of Fame coach turned such an amateur-hour trick.

Truth is, any bum could've won 35 games with this roster. Nobody was asking Brown to do what Bill Parcells did to Kotite's 1-15 Jets, taking them to 9-7 in one year. But the Knicks and their fans had every right to expect 7-9, and a core commitment to effort and defense that would suggest better things to come.

Instead they got Athens times 10. When he wasn't benching LeBron James, Brown spent the 2004 Summer Games ripping his players and the selection committee members who picked them, killing team morale, enraging David Stern and ensuring his place in history as the first coach to lose Olympic gold with NBA stars.

Now Stern has a brand new reason to give Brown the silent treatment when they pass in the hallway: Larry Legend is tearing down one of the league's most important teams.

Brown trashed his players and, in extension, his boss. He prolonged an absurdly public feud with Stephon Marbury (Hey, Larry, you're the adult in the relationship, remember?). He was going with the kids one minute, the veterans the next and back to the kids the next, this as he plucked his starting five from a hat.

Brown's players didn't compete. They didn't learn. They didn't resist the temptation to quit on him. They didn't bother to put up even the minimal resistance they offered the likes of Don Chaney.

Red Holzman, Brown's hero, would've been most proud.

"I think we'll make some changes," Thomas said.

Brown's address should represent the first change, though Thomas said he won't fire the coach because history tells him not to. In his time as master rebuilder, Brown has gotten off to slow starts in San Antonio and Philly.

Just not this slow. Just not with a $125 million payroll Brown couldn't make worth a damn.

He feels lucky anyway. "I don't know how many coaches in this league can coach a team that won 23 games," Brown said, "and still have a job."

Brown always knows where to get a job. People in Detroit still can't believe he prepared for last year's NBA Finals by negotiating a potential deal with Cleveland. It's why Pistons owner Bill Davidson, an old man who doesn't say anything about anybody, told his fans he wouldn't have a coach who's "not a good person," and that an era of "too much Larry Brown and not enough Pistons" was done.

Thomas isn't ready to say these things into a live mike. But as he sat next to Brown at the Knicks' practice facility, there to meet the press, Thomas looked like he would've rather been attending a cookout at Larry Bird's house.

His posture rigid and his expression grim, Thomas knew the man sitting to his right had engaged him in a fight to the professional death.

If Thomas hasn't exactly covered himself in front office glory, he can't be blamed for his most obvious free-agent blunder: Larry Brown. Only Brown can be blamed for Brown. Only Brown can be blamed for his low-return, high-maintenance approach, right up to the circus he wheeled into Jersey Wednesday night.

"I want to retire here," Brown said at the Knicks' facility.

Isiah should retire his number right now. Brown was a bigger bust than Jerome James and a bigger headache than Stephon Marbury, who credited Brown for making him "a better man" before offering a Starbury-esque "No comment" to the question of whether Brown was the right man for the Knicks.

Jim Dolan will apparently give Thomas the final word on that. "I've never, ever gotten a feeling they didn't want me to be a part of this," Brown said.

That's the worst read of the year. If Thomas can figure out a way to run out Brown without paying him $40 million, bet on the team president carrying out the plan.

Maybe Larry Brown was once worth all the incessant male-diva drama. Those days — like the hopes of a 23-win season — are long gone.

same stuff the "kool aid" drinkers have been saying for months...when a free agent comes to new york, they suck their first year, that's just how it is...AROD put up MVP numbers and was considered a bust.

So, now we are going to blame Zeke for hiring Larry Brown? At the time EVERYONE heralded as the move of moves.

Come on guys, pick a stance, you hate everyone but larry.

[Edited by - rvhoss on 04-21-2006 09:56 AM]

It's funny, I was going to respond to that same thing that you wrote in another thread. Dolan views this organization like a business like he should in his position. Public opinion is meaningless in the long run. Anyone successful knows that. On top one day, on the bottom the next. Hell "redemption" is the best thing to sell to the mass public. If ticket sales stay up and per the Garden and press, they are for next season, public opinion doesn't matter because guys like Dolan knows that blows in the wind.