Larry Brown (as a potential Rockets coach) & Team USA Duties - Does this concern you?

Does not concern me at all.
Larry Brown is the best!
He has assistant coaches.
He will find a way to do it.
He will return in time for training camp...
But who said he was gonna be our coach?!? lol...not yet!

Hmm...on the Olympic team. It will be stressful to coach his former star Allen Iverson.

I won't be concerned at all.

I think we can win 15 more games than last season!

 

Nope.

 

Getting the pub in the Olympics is a good thing. Larry gets to coach against Yao, which should be fun . All eyes will be on our Rockets, and what seperates them from the Olympic team.

 

This feels good!

 

Yes it does! There is so much work that the Team needs. He should not be distracted! Maybe Rudy T could coach USA, hes done it before.

 

Maybe Philly, too!

 

The question is whether we take Brown with his commitments or Van Gundy, Dunleave or someone else, without them. No brainer for me. I take Brown.

I think this is where Brown will need a good assistant coach. I believe it should be fairly easy for Les to get a good assistant coach that was a former head coach . . . and on the cheap. Why? Brown's coaching tenure with the Rox will likely have a lifespan of around 4 years.

His assistant coach would be a prime candidate to be a replacement then. He would know the personnel, know the system, know the owner, and HE WOULD, BY DEFINITION, HAVE PREVIOUSLY BEEN A HEAD COACH.

The assistant coach can begin working with Nachbar and Griffin. I'd rather have Brown coaching in the summer, but this will have to do.

Separately, I believe that, in his 3-4 years, Brown will teach us how to play the game properly, and will get us into the playoffs and likely the 2nd round or a WCF appearance. He might get us a ring. If not, the next coach will inherit a great team and will be hired to take us to the promised land (ala Phil Jackson, or maybe Rudy T comes out of retirement).

 

Wasn't Larry Brown a Team USA assitant in 2000? If so, it didn't seem to affect Philly reaching the finals that year did it?

 

not sure if you heard this but



Larry Brown one of game's best teachers

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Dr. Jack Ramsay
Special to ESPN.com


Larry Brown has hinted before at stepping down as head coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, so the news of his reported resignation is no great surprise.

I would be shocked to see Brown reappear in the NBA next season.
A coaching icon, the 62-year-old Brown is one of the all-time best teachers of the game. While he's apparently ready to take a break, Brown will never stop coaching. He has said to me on many occasions that he will always coach somewhere -- whether again at the college level, where he won a national title with Kansas in 1988, or even at the high-school level. Brown loves coaching and excels at it.

There are certainly other NBA teams interested in having him as coach. But his contract with the 76ers, which has two years remaining, prohibits him from coaching another NBA team (76ers chairman Ed Snider would need to waive that condition). My sense is that Brown wants to get away from the NBA game for awhile, perhaps to a situation with less pressure. First, though, Brown will face the international pressure of coaching the the 2004 U.S. Olympic team.

I would be shocked to see Brown reappear in the NBA next season. He's best with younger players, although in the NBA he's also demonstrated the ability to help veteran players revive their careers (such as Derrick Coleman) and younger guys improve their games (such as Todd MacCulloch and Eric Snow). Snow saw no significant playing time with the Seattle SuperSonics, but he became a starter in Philly.

Moreover, Brown helped a talent like Allen Iverson become a much better team player. Brown lifts his players, enabling them to get the most out of their abilities.

In his 31 years of coaching, I've never seen a player who did not improve under Larry Brown. Another impressive element of his longevity is that he's had just three losing seasons at the college and professional level -- a 21-61 record with the San Antonio Spurs in 1986-87, a 39-43 showing with the Pacers in 1996-97 and a 31-51 record after his first season with Philly in 1997-98.

I first coached against Brown in 1976-77, the year the ABA and NBA merged. He was coach of the Denver Nuggets. This was toward the beginning of Brown's coaching career, about a decade after his college playing days under Dean Smith at North Carolina.


Brown
The Nuggets won the Central Division that season, led by David Thompson and a run-and-jump, pressing defense that they brought from the ABA. Brown's team fostered a frenetic pace and created turnovers that led to easy baskets. My Portland Trail Blazers met the Nuggets in the playoffs, and we won the series in six tough games. We went on to win the NBA championship, led by Bill Walton, Maurice Lucas and Co.

What I remember about Larry -- and this is something I still see in him -- is that he was always gracious to the opposing coach. He commented several times about how well we played and how well our Portland team was coached. That's uncommon, especially when a team loses. You rarely hear the losing coach praise the winning coach. That shows tremendous class.

The NBA coaching profession will miss Larry Brown. He's a coach's coach, teaching skills and team play -- and he won't back down from that. That's been good for the game and for the NBA.


Dr. Jack Ramsay, who coached the Portland Trail Blazers to the 1977 NBA title, is an NBA analyst for ESPN and a regular contributor to ESPN.com.


If this is true, then Larry won't be coaching here. Anybody have any info

 

Would it be completely out of the question for Rudy and CD to help out during the summer?

Brown is reportedly pretty good friends with Rudy and CD. I know they've worked together in the past with Brown being Rudy's assistant. Maybe Rudy can help implement some of the things Brown wants to do while he's gone coaching for the olympics.

I know Rudy says he doesn't want to deal the stress of coaching anymore, but there really is no stress involved in developing players in the summer. There has to be a few things unfinished that Rudy wanted to do before stepping down. Mainly, developing Boki this summer. This could be his chance.