Posted by SupremeCommander:

Posted by BlueSeats:

Posted by CrushAlot:

That is a great article. I didn't realize that Larry and Isiah had had a good relationship prior to Larry coaching the Knicks. It seems blatantly obvious that everyone is aware of Isiah's way of working. I don't understand how this can continue.

Yes, Larry Brown used to run a coaching camp for coaches. It's invitational only, and he invited isiah the year he was fired from Indy. Isiah credited Brown with giving him his confidence back. That's one of the reasons they were friendly enough that Brown allowed Steph on the Olympic team at isiah's request. Marbury was only on that team as a favor to Isiah.

REALLY? Not that I don't believe you, but I'd like to read any information you could find on that subject. Because if you remember that team, Marbury was a major reason it sucked and guys like Wade and LeBron didn't get enough playing time with guys like Marbury getting too many minutes... Sure, Marbury had the one big game, but he didn't deserves the minutes he got.

Posted by BlueSeats:

Posted by SupremeCommander:

Posted by BlueSeats:

Posted by CrushAlot:

That is a great article. I didn't realize that Larry and Isiah had had a good relationship prior to Larry coaching the Knicks. It seems blatantly obvious that everyone is aware of Isiah's way of working. I don't understand how this can continue.

Yes, Larry Brown used to run a coaching camp for coaches. It's invitational only, and he invited isiah the year he was fired from Indy. Isiah credited Brown with giving him his confidence back. That's one of the reasons they were friendly enough that Brown allowed Steph on the Olympic team at isiah's request. Marbury was only on that team as a favor to Isiah.

REALLY? Not that I don't believe you, but I'd like to read any information you could find on that subject. Because if you remember that team, Marbury was a major reason it sucked and guys like Wade and LeBron didn't get enough playing time with guys like Marbury getting too many minutes... Sure, Marbury had the one big game, but he didn't deserves the minutes he got.

If I have anything it's on my other computer. I'll take a look later on.

Posted by BlueSeats:

Posted by BlueSeats:

Posted by SupremeCommander:

Posted by BlueSeats:

Posted by CrushAlot:

That is a great article. I didn't realize that Larry and Isiah had had a good relationship prior to Larry coaching the Knicks. It seems blatantly obvious that everyone is aware of Isiah's way of working. I don't understand how this can continue.

Yes, Larry Brown used to run a coaching camp for coaches. It's invitational only, and he invited isiah the year he was fired from Indy. Isiah credited Brown with giving him his confidence back. That's one of the reasons they were friendly enough that Brown allowed Steph on the Olympic team at isiah's request. Marbury was only on that team as a favor to Isiah.

REALLY? Not that I don't believe you, but I'd like to read any information you could find on that subject. Because if you remember that team, Marbury was a major reason it sucked and guys like Wade and LeBron didn't get enough playing time with guys like Marbury getting too many minutes... Sure, Marbury had the one big game, but he didn't deserves the minutes he got.

If I have anything it's on my other computer. I'll take a look later on.

Supreme, I couldn't find it with a quick look, but I think you know my cred is pretty good in these matters. Whatever I had on it was only a line or two anyway, nothing in depth.

But I did find the article on Browns clinic:

For Thomas, Knicks' Job Is Debt Returned

By WILLIAM C. RHODEN
Published: July 23, 2005

FOR the past few weeks, the focus of the National Basketball Association has been on the bizarre turn of circumstances that led to Larry Brown's being ousted as head coach of the Detroit Pistons. A year after leading the Pistons to an N.B.A. championship and weeks after taking them back to the finals, Brown was effectively fired and then replaced. Now he's being pursued again.

On Thursday, Isiah Thomas, the Knicks' president of basketball operations, flew to the Hamptons and met with Brown. The initial talks apparently went well, but Thomas's interest in Brown goes beyond that of a team president intent on hiring a new head coach. Thomas is throwing a lifeline to a man who once threw one to him.

In 2003, Thomas spent the summer helping Brown prepare for the Athens Olympics the next year. At the time, Thomas was the head coach of the Indiana Pacers. Thomas was called back from Puerto Rico, where he was watching the national team, and fired by the Pacers.

Soon after, Thomas, stunned and jobless, received an invitation from Brown and John Calipari, the head coach at the University of Memphis. They wanted him to attend an invitation-only retreat that they were conducting in Memphis.

"When we got back from Puerto Rico, Larry and Cal called me and invited me to Memphis to share some ideas on basketball," Thomas said yesterday.

Thomas was being initiated into Brown's basketball family, a sprawling network of college and professional coaches.

At the lowest point of his professional career, Thomas said, the two-and-a-half-day retreat was a desperately needed life raft. Aside from talking basketball and exchanging strategies, he was assured by Brown that, despite the speed bump in Indiana, he had a lot of basketball ahead of him.

"To be embraced by a group such as that, it meant a lot to me and it helped me get through a very difficult time in my life," Thomas said.

He has attended the retreat in Memphis ever since. Last year, he brought along Herb Williams, the Knicks' current head coach.

"He bonded with Larry and all the coaches, and that's why Herb and Larry are being so kind to each other in this whole process," Thomas said.

The B.C. (Brown-Calipari) Retreat was founded a few years ago by Brown, who has held 10 professional and college jobs, and Calipari, who has held 3. Calipari began his career with Brown at Kansas. "I had a bathroom office," Calipari said Thursday. "I got coffee and picked up the laundry."

The retreat is made up of coaches in various stages of transition: some have jobs, some are between jobs, some are beginning new jobs or beginning a season on shaky ground. "A lot of people are working, a lot of people are not working, a lot of people are trying to share their ideas on the game," Thomas said yesterday.

The original idea of the retreat was to have a reunion of former players and assistants who made up Brown's coaching family. "The whole point was that we've been together in this business and we've all helped each other," Calipari said. "Let's just do a retreat - for us - for nothing else other than to get together and make sure we all know we're there for each other."

After the first year, Brown and Calipari decided that, with the attrition rate among head coaches rising so dramatically, the retreat should also serve as a place for coaches to hone their skills, lick their wounds and use the network to get jobs.

Brown invited Portland's Nate McMillan to attend before last season, when he was with Seattle, and invited Byron Scott to attend the September after he was dismissed by the Nets. When Larry Eustachy resigned as the men's basketball coach at Iowa State in 2003, Calipari reached out. He had met Eustachy a year earlier when they were part of a contingent of college coaches lobbying Congress on behalf of the N.C.A.A. They spent the day together, and Calipari remembered liking Eustachy.

After Eustachy resigned because of inappropriate behavior, Calipari told Brown that he wanted to invite Eustachy to the retreat. "He was absolutely getting pummeled, and some of it wasn't fair," Calipari said. "He admitted he had a drinking problem. He admitted that he lost his mind. But there was piling on like I'd never seen."

When Calipari was fired by the Nets, Brown called him and told him to join him in Philadelphia. "He said he needed me," Calipari said. "He didn't need me; I needed him."

Now Brown is the ex-coach in need, although it is not clear whether Brown needs another job or some rest.

Thomas said he thought Brown needed what Thomas needed three seasons ago when he was fired by the Pacers: an emotional lifeline.

"Getting fired is very emotional: somebody told you they didn't want you," Thomas said. "That normally happens to somebody else, but never you. And with Larry, that's where he's at now and that's where I was."

Brown needs a rest. Emotionally and physically, he needs a timeout. He has been through a tough year and a long week that saw the Pistons dismiss him and the news media stake out his summer home.

He needs the comfort of his own retreat.

For sure I know your cred is good with stuff like that... I accept what you wrote and wasn't questioning its accuracy, but was just interested to read more.

I didn't realize this whole Isiah Thomas/Larry Brown coaching fraternity existed though. So, that makes that situation even more interesting, considering how it played out.