Blinebury: Firey coach would pull no punches

Gotcha, Ron. The world is ok again...


Fiery coach would pull no punches

By FRAN BLINEBURY
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle

SAN ANTONIO -- Larry Brown slept here.

And there. And there. And there.

The Merchant Marines haven't been to as many ports of call as Brown, now free once again after putting Philadelphia in his rearview mirror.

What they remember from his days with the Spurs is that Brown was usually the smartest guy in the room when it comes to talking basketball. Which he does. Incessantly and authoritatively. Ad nauseam, if you ask some.

Is it accurate to label anybody a genius for merely figuring out ways to get a ball to go through a hoop?

Call him then a savant of the frivolous, if need be. But everyone seems to agree that he is often operating on a higher intellectual plane than the rest of the X-and-O fraternity.

It has been said that if you were able to hit a "pause" button and stop any one of his practices the way one might the image on a VCR, that Brown will instantly be able to point out each player who is out of position and every other mistake down to the tiniest detail.

That's what you're getting when you sign up Brown to run your team. More than a coach, more than a conscience. You also are getting your mother constantly telling you not only to clean up your room but also why, why, why.

If the Rockets are seeking a teacher to take the team Rudy Tomjanovich assembled and show it the path to dunking and dribbling enlightenment, then Brown's class would be the equivalent of the hardest math course in graduate school. They will learn so much that, at times, lots of times, their heads will hurt. Along with their feelings.

In the hallways around the Spurs offices, they occasionally still talk of the night when Brown had his shirt unbuttoned and partly off by the time the players arrived back in the locker room at halftime of a game. That's because he was getting ready to fight guard Willie Anderson, who wasn't getting the message. Of course, Anderson was the type who might not have understood a message delivered by a flaming arrow. But that was beside the point.

Do the Rockets need a rocket scientist to turn them into everything the club owner thinks they can be?

It still says here that Mike Dunleavy would be the ideal fit -- an intense, fiercely competitive sort who could light a fire without burning down the house. With Dunleavy, you get a sharp mind with an edge. With Brown, you frequently go over the edge, a life filled with melodrama and angst.

But Leslie Alexander practically worships at the altar of Larry Brown the basketball god. He loves Brown's vision of how the game should be played at the highest level, his passion that frequently tiptoes past the border guards into obsession.

For Brown, this might be his best chance ever to dabble in high art with a firecracker guard in Steve Francis, another personal favorite in Cuttino Mobley and the ultimate wild card in 7-5 Yao Ming. You can almost picture him in a white lab coat, mixing and experimenting over a Bunsen burner.

He might be the perfect match for Mobley, a hard-nosed, thick-skinned type who could benefit from some tough love. Francis likes to wear a hard image but could be vulnerable to some of the withering verbal attacks that even pricked Allen Iverson at times. Perhaps the cultural differences could spare Yao from picking up on all of Brown's neurotic tendencies or, at least, the depth of them.

For Alexander, it would certainly qualify as "the big splash." Yet there is reason to fret about the tidal wave that always seems to eventually follow one of Brown's stays, leaving the villagers and their grass huts swamped.

If he came to Houston, the NBA's Texas Triangle of Spurs, Mavs and Rockets would closely resemble the Bermuda Triangle in terms of peril for opponents. You'd have three Coach-of-the-Year winners in Gregg Popovich, Don Nelson and Brown. You'd have the two teams in the Western Conference finals and a 43-win club that everyone believes should be much better.

In addition, Popovich was an assistant under both Nelson and Brown, so the potential for mind games and one-upsmanship would be there. Not to mention three distinctly different styles of play. Nelson runs and Popovich grinds, while Brown hears the music inside his head like the prodigy Mozart writing symphonies.

It might be fun. It would be interesting. Surely, these young and unproven Rockets would learn something from the tormented teacher that is peripatetic Larry Brown.

If only it's to be ready to rumble when the coach is taking his shirt off at halftime.

 

Excuse me?

I've been the king of "cut and paste" since you were in diapers.

You don't want any part of me.