“If Allen Iverson is the heart and soul of this team, then Larry Brown is the gray matter. He’s the genius behind this whole thing.”76ER PRESIDENT PAT CROCE PHILADELPHIA – To fully comprehend the hoop genius of Larry Brown is to know there will be a line leaking from the steps of the First Union Center tonight that could reach Broad Street – simply for those who want their heads shaved bald in the image of team president Pat Croce.
That the Sixers are down 0-2 against the Pacers after two hearty games will only rouse the hysteria. After all, it wasn’t that long ago the only fun pro basketball offered in this city was venting a bad day on Shawn Bradley.
Only two years ago the Sixers were cemented deep in the dregs, a decade of one disaster after another sapping a glorious past. With each coach – Johnny Davis, Doug Moe, John Lucas, Fred Carter – and each mistake – trading Charles Barkley for what turned out to be Andrew Lang, wasting high drafts picks on Bradley, Jerry Stackhouse, Sharone Wright, signing creeky-kneed Scott Williams to a $21 million contract that hamstrung the cap – the memory of Julius Erving faded.
The team that once stood next to the Celtics and Lakers in the ’80s had become a Siamese Twin of the Clippers in the ’90s.
And then in the summer of ’97 Rick Pitino turned down Croce, who was forced to go with his second choice – the bespectacled Larry Brown, healer of sick franchises. Thirty-five players later, the Sixers enjoyed their first winning season since ’91 and in these playoffs faced the Eastern Conference favorites – the same Pacers Brown resuscitated – almost dead even in Indy.
It appears they will not survive this second round. But that’s not the point. What is: The Sixers seem poised to become the conference’s Next Contender, with the Pacers graying, the Heat fraying and the Knicks always disarraying.
“This is exactly what I expected when I hired Larry Brown,” the exuberant Croce says.
It’s hard to fathom Brown, now 58 years old, has been here only two years. Then again it’s not when you consider that everywhere the nomadic coach has gone he has reached the playoffs by his second season, including safari excursions with the Clippers and Nets. In all, he has led six different NBA teams to the playoffs.
If the barometer of coaching is set by Pat Riley or Phil Jackson, then where does Brown rate? Consider, that three of the eight teams left in the current playoffs are decorated with his fingerprints. It was Brown who put San Antonio on the map, turning a 21-61 team in ’89 into a perennial contender.
More recently, it was Brown who rescued the Pacers. Larry Bird plays the legend by the bench for Indiana. But let’s be real: This team basically runs on auto pilot, and Brown set the dial. The biggest change since Brown left a 39-43 season in ’97 is the health of Rik Smits.
Brown, Indiana’s all-time winningest coach, called playing the Pacers his worst nightmare, because of how he left – or perhaps because he left, period. Leaving a place where you accomplish something real is always heart-tugging. It was time to go, he says. And that’s why Brown – despite a .602 winning percentage in almost 2,000 career games, spanning the NBA, ABA and college ranks – has never reached Riley’s status: He always leaves.
Croce says he’s not concerned about Brown’s track record. But somewhere must lurk some fear that one day Brown will walk into his office and tell him it’s time, whether to take the long-rumored North Carolina job or simply to just sit by a beach in Southern California with his family.
“He’s a great coach,” Pacers guard Mark Jackson says. “That’s pretty obvious. But for some reason, the final year just didn’t work. I think it ran its course, that’s all.”
Says Indiana GM Donnie Walsh, who played with Brown at North Carolina: “That’s the way Larry always leaves. I’ve been his friend 40 years and we’ll always be friends, but he reached a point where he didn’t want to be here anymore.
“But I don’t think he should have any recriminations about what he did here. It wasn’t an easy year to coach. We had brought in new players because we thought we maxed out with what we had. But it didn’t work, for whatever reasons.
“Larry’s a guy who lives and dies with it. He’s so intense that it runs out after a while and he feels like he’s got to leave. That’s pretty much been his history.”
Larry Brown’s present is all they care about in Philadelphia. In reality, Brown’s Sixers are a fresh carbon of Brown’s Pacers. The ink has yet to dry. But they are startling the same, both with only one true superstar (Allen Iverson, Reggie Miller) surrounded by thermos guys who concentrate on defense and rebounding.
‘If you look in our locker room,” Brown says, “I tried to make sure we had the same situation as I had when I was the Indiana coach.”
The situation here revolves around Iverson, though there was a point when Brown wondered if it would all work out. Brown, always tough on his point guards, has sparred with Iverson publicly. Earlier this season, Brown took his superstar to task after a series of missed practices. Instead of sulking and asking for his coach’s head, Iverson seems to have embraced Brown’s ways while maturing greatly just in the past two months.
And so it’s not uncommon to see Iverson sitting on the bench right next to Brown during blows in a game. There, you will see coach and star engrossed in conversation, Iverson dually shaking his head. And you will see Iverson play smart, like he did in the upset of Orlando.
“Coach and myself, we came a long way,” Iverson says. “We started off rocky. Now I can say we’re friends.”
So says Croce, “If Allen Iverson is the heart and soul of this team, then Larry Brown is the gray matter. He’s the genius behind this whole thing.
“He’s an honorable man. You see him as a genius, but he’s a very special person. And this is exactly what he is here for. In his mind, he knew exactly what he should do, and it’s not over yet.”
The line outside the First Union Center says so.
