ESPN: Sources Says Brown will take Cavs Job It's by Chad Ford so that's why take it with a grain of salt.
I don't know why this article has to be taken with a grain of salt. This has been hinted at from numerous sources. And while people like to dog his analysis, Chad Ford's reporting seems to be all right.
His analysis is shyte, but Ford is in tight with agents, those are always his "league sources," and while their motivation is suspect -- they know what's going on.
I wonder how this will affect the Pistons championship run. It has to be demoralizing for the players knowing that your coach is about to defect to another organization next season.
seriously. i mean it would be hard not to play your hardest to try to win at this point b/c you're so close to the finals, but it has to be a little hard to look at the guy in the huddle yelling at you/diagramming plays/giving instructions w/o a little resentment or a feeling of being let down. even if you feel like you're giving it your all this may take away from actually doing it. dammit brown, don't help the f'ing heat out.
Sam Smith (I know, I know ...) with a great look on just how c!ck-tastic LB can be: http://chicagosports.chicagotribune...15may30,1,5770674.column?coll=cs-sports-print Can you imagine Brown with the power to trade anyone on the Cavs? LeBron may not make it past Christmas.
Well, Brown was effectively GM of the Sixers when he coached them, and the results weren't too impressive (he forced Billy King's hand in drafting Larry Hughes, back when he wasn't any good, over Pierce and Nowitzki; he gave Aaron McKie a mammoth extension; he vastly overpaid for mediocre players like Greg Buckner, etc.) Still, I like this move for the Cavs.
Given his track record in Philly, I think he'll do a pretty bad job as a gm. It's just a matter of how much of a mess he'll leave the franchise in. I'd be interested in seeing how PJ would do with the Pistons, though I think it's unlikely he goes there. How sweet would it be if he goes there and fails to do anything significant?
My thing is: How does Brown still have a job in the NBA when his track record after leaving the current team he's with is horrible? Take away last year's championship, and I have to wonder: is the success when he's coaching the team outweigh the future of the ballclub? I'm thinking LeBron is as good as gone once his contract is up.
Larry Brown I don't remember anyone else pulling the same stunt that Brown has, publicly joining a division rival while his team is fighting for their playoff lives. The only thing that comes close is Bill Parcells going from the pats to the jets before the superbowl, and Parcells had the decency to make late night phone calls and try to keep it secret. The most amazing thing of all is that no one in the media is calling Brown out on this. He didn't give his all in the regular season, but he had his excuses with the bladder condition. But this is different, people should be killing Larry Brown for the disloyalty that he's showing.
You know, is it me or is this bad timing? Aren't the pistons still in the Eastern Conference Finals? I don't know, just a thought?
I posted this in the Draft forum, with some doubt - but if Ford is tight with the league, then it may be accurate http://bbs2.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?threadid=97052
Gotta say...i'm glad we ended up with JVG. I think Brown is a helluva coach...but he has wandering eyes constantly. We'd be looking for a new coach right about now, too.
Exactly man. I said the exact same thing at work today. One of my buddies at work told me about brown going to Cav land, and the first thing I said was glad the Rockets didn't get him.
This is just Larry Brown being Larry Brown. I swear, sometimes people prop him up just to make other coaches seem lesser, mainly Phil Jackson. All we need now is him to start playing the blame game after the Heat take them out. Watch out Chauncey, you're probably the easiest target, maybe Rasheed... One of the greatest teachers the game has ever seen, it's not right that he has to act this way, grow up! PS: Did anyone hear Mike James on the radio the other day saying that he married up? That was funny. GREAT article by Marc Stein. http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playoffs2005/columns/story?columnist=stein_marc&id=2072330 Mr. Play The Right Way should be absolutely ashamed. Ashamed of himself for letting his latest bout of wanderlust encroach on the Detroit Pistons' attempt to repeat as NBA champions, in the heart of the playoffs. As for the Cleveland Cavaliers ... They should simply be mortified. Flat-out freaked out by the path they're apparently choosing. Dan Gilbert has endured considerable criticism since buying the Cavaliers from Gordon Gund, some of it unwarranted. But this? Gilbert's obsessive pursuit of Larry Brown as the man to run the Cavs' front office and assemble a title-contending team around LeBron James – and not coach it – warrants the loudest possible criticism. For it's one of the most ridiculous ideas I've ever heard ... and that's excluding all the issues of propriety. Larry Brown cannot be an effective personnel chief in the NBA. He can't be. He won't be. He sours on players far too quickly to be a level-headed talent evaluator. He is chronically, famously fickle. Clevelanders are concerned that LeBron might bolt in free agency in a few years? If Larry is their general manager, Gilbert and the locals are advised to be far more concerned that Brown might try to ship LeBron somewhere before next February's trade deadline. That's no joke. That's Larry. That's how he is. As a strategist, he's one of the best ever. He's bettered every team he's ever coached, and many of those teams nose-dived as soon as he left. The Hall of Famer didn't need that NBA championship last spring to be regarded as one of the all-time X-and-O greats (he already had an NCAA championship). Yet there are reasons Brown never won a title until he got to Detroit, and the list of reasons is not limited to tough competition and Brown's penchant for grating on even his stars. In just about every stop except Indiana, where the ever-shrewd Donnie Walsh maintained control of personnel matters, Brown has had too much front-office input. It's bad enough that his daily demands have worn down some of the most coachable stars in recent memory: David Robinson, Reggie Miller and Danny Manning, to name three. Yet it only adds to the negativity swirling around Brown's teams that he's always pushing harder for trades than any of his bench brethren. Once wind of that gets back to the players ... In Detroit, though, Joe Dumars is too smart to let Larry have that kind of sway. Dumars told Larry to be the coach of the Pistons, for good money, and that's it. Brown has been successful with the Pistons largely because Dumars is strong and smart enough to make the right roster moves while diffusing Brown's moodiness. Even so, Dumars has been forced to undertake considerable refereeing this season. Brown has been linked with new jobs all season – Knicks, Lakers and now Cavs – and insiders say the constant speculation cost Brown the support of his veterans months ago. When the Pistons win now, team sources say that it's often in spite of Brown. The vets are fed up with the speculation and have been known to use it as fuel. At this stage, though, daily rumors of Brown's supposed deal with the Cavs have become much more distraction than fuel source. Now, when the Pistons need desperately to pull together against surging Miami, they're inevitably wondering instead whether the coach has already mentally left them for Lake Erie. I say let him go. I say let Brown go right now if he wants to leave. I say Dumars should plead with Chuck Daly to take over as interim coach for the rest of the playoffs, and then bring in Flip Saunders to start developing Darko Milicic as a contributor to support the best starting five in the East. Let Larry go to Cleveland and start mucking up a divisional rival that has the potential to be scary someday, just because LeBron is there. Let Larry go to Cleveland and hover over poor Mike Brown, the new coach-elect. Because he will, which is yet another aspect of the Larry hire that makes such little sense for the Cavs. They've just committed to Mike Brown, a promising 35-year-old getting his first head-coaching opportunity, to succeed the veteran Paul Silas as LeBron's second full-time coach. Problem is, if the Cavs start slowly, how long do you think it'll take before fans or media types or Larry himself starts wondering – loudly – why the elder Brown isn't doing what he does best? Coaching. It's probably bad enough for Mike Brown to know that, at the very least, he can expect some serious second-guessing from his boss. All of the above, incidentally, doesn't even account for the fact that Larry and LeBron didn't have the best time together last summer at the Athens Olympics and thus have a relationship to repair. It doesn't feel good at all to be so critical of a man who does have legitimate health issues. The complications stemming from Brown's recent hip surgeries are sufficiently real and serious enough to force him out of the coaching business after this season, at least for a while. Yet Larry has no business working in the team-building business, now or later, in Cleveland or anywhere else. Not when the Pistons are still in the playoffs, and not after. So... Brown owes a string of apologies to Pistons players, coaches and staffers – and fans. As for Gilbert? If Larry is his team prez, trust me. You'll see. Bank on a zillion regrets for the billionaire.
Again, not really tight with the league -- but I have no doubt he's relaying what Hodge's agent told him. Now, teams pass off all kinds of mis-information with the Draft a month away. Teams know that agents talk, agents angle, and agents lie. So this doesn't mean it's going to happen. Hodge's agent defintely told Ford this, gave him fodder for the story, but instead of questioning Ford -- you have to question the agent. He could be lying in order to secure future interviews/workouts with other teams. He could by lying for a hundred other reasons. With anonymous team sources, you're doing ok, because they rarely have a reason to pass misinformation (in spite of the rare case of an asst./asst./asst. junior GM leaking a trade/signing rumor to generate bad press, because he/she doesn't like the move). When agents talk, they're doing it to satisfy their bank account and their egos.
