First off, some pretty amazing comments going on the last few weeks. If you haven't checked out the comments for The (Knicks) Big Picture, or The Nets Move To Brooklyn posts, check them out. Specifically check Jahmal's comment, and Greek Chocolate (is the legend making a comeback?).
Our old friend, Larry Brown, according to this Philadelphia Inquirer article, is indecisive about whether he will take the coaching job in Philly next season, the GM job (booting the ineffective Billy King), or both. And, of course, we've heard the rumors about Brown jumping over to the Charlotte Tar Heels (to work with UNC alumni Jordan, coaching UNC alumni Felton, Mays, and possibly Vince Carter). And so we must offer The Warning.
The Warning was issued to us Knicks fans when Larry Brown arrived, and we heard it and ignored it, to our peril. We didn't care, myself included, because Larry Brown was good for 3-5 more wins a year by himself! He would take us to the next level, because he turns everyone into winners. And his record, even with the Knicks debacle included, speaks for itself.
But there were warnings. Not in the mainstream media, nor in the local newspapers, all of whom Larry Brown had (and still has) incredibly heavy pull over. The coverage of his arrival was treated like a coronation; even though it was the middle of July, he got back page coverage. The warning, as it was, came via an article in SI from Ian Thomsen - referenced here by Ken Berger of Newsday. Take a look at some of the money lines:
NBA colleagues are supplying Thomas with two pieces of advice. First, to understand that his relationship with Brown will ultimately end badly, because it usually does with Brown. Second, Thomas is being told to maintain firm control over his team. The internal fire that makes Brown an exceptional coach also makes him an erratic judge of talent, as he changes his opinions about players frequently. In spite of their ugly divorce, the Pistons feel that they achieved their goals with Brown because he won them a championship without being allowed to meddle with their well-balanced roster. The Knicks' lineup still requires a lot of improvement, but Thomas needs to cautious about taking too much advice from Brown about personnel, and always keep in mind that he is still going to be running the Knicks long after Brown is gone.
That's prophecy right there. Here's SML's take on the Larry Brown fiasco. Let's start at the top: Isiah is hired; the Knicks go 33-49 the first season after he is hired. Then comes Larry Brown, making it known via his media contacts that he wants the Knicks coaching job; this is similar to the tactic Phil Jackson employed during the post-Riley era, when he actively let be known he wanted Jeff van Gundy's (the coach at the time) job, without actually coming out and saying it. David Checketts was in a strong position and had the leverage to fight off Phil Jackson and keep the job in the hands of Van Gundy, whom he trusted. Isiah was not. He was still knew to job, and more importantly he had a mandate from Dolan to keep the Knicks relevant, by any means (as a sidenote, it was Dolan who ordered Scott Layden, Isiah's predecessor, to trade certain players he didn't like, namely Latrell Sprewell and Marcus Camby; apparently he loosen up his "standards" under Isiah, or realized that having a relevant team was more important than having "nice" players, in light of what was going on with the Nets).
Given the pressure from Dolan to stay relevant, I think Isiah was clearly in favor (or forced to, I don't know) of hiring Larry Brown. Almost as soon as he got to NY, though, Larry Brown's eye turned towards Isiah's job as GM. Why did they clash? Most likely the Marbury thing. From early on Larry was not a fan of Marbury, and bad-mouth him in the media. He also used his media contacts to attack Marbury's character. Almost immediately Marbury went from being the hometown-born savior of the franchise (when he was traded here) to being a selfish, egomaniac point who "didn't get it". The media attacked him as not willing to buy into Brown's proven winning way. Isiah defended his point guard, his prize acquistion.
Isiah also defended his other prize acquistion, Eddy Curry. Larry Brown attacked him as out-of-shape (still a common theme to this date), and played him sporadically despite Isiah's belief that he was a franchise cornerstone. Note that Jackie Butler cut into Curry's minutes last season. Butler averaged 13:24 minutes a game last year (in 55 games). Curry averaged 25 minutes per game, or less than he had each of the two previous seasons in Chicago. And who is Jackie Butler? He's an out of shape center who happened to be represented by Larry Brown's "father figure", agent David Glass. He know plays for the Spurs, averaging 1:30 minutes a game this season. Despite all the glowering love from the media he got last season ("a find!"), it turns out he's dead weight.
The working relationship between Brown and Isiah crumbled quickly. Isiah isn't an easy going person, and neither is Larry Brown. Nor did Brown feel he had to - he was the big money coach (making more than Isiah, probably), with the media to back him up. Why should he answer to Isiah? He could have his job if he wanted. And so he went after it.
Larry Brown the coach tanked the season, in order to make Isiah Thomas the GM look awful, in order to make way for Larry Brown the GM. Anyone who watched the Knicks last season knows he threw the season; he started an NBA-record number of different lineups, so that there was never any flow. He took hot players out of the starting lineup or the game at odd times (notable Frye, but also Crawford, Curry, Lee, etc). I could list all the evidence against Larry Brown, but the bottom line is he took a 33-49 team that added Curry, Lee, Robinson, and Frye, and somehow they dropped to 23-59. You explain it.
More importantly, he blew his leverage. He pushed hard for Isiah to get him a new point guard, and in doing so forced the trade for Steven Francis, which was either Isiah or Dolan trying to placate him, as commentator DoctorK16 said. Here's what else he added:
"Then LB starts calling around the league initiating trades for other PG, basically forcing the GM into acquiring a PG less capable than the one he has already. Said acquired PG has bum knee and misses a ton of time and is turnover machine when he's on the floor. All while continuing to kill the cap."
Absolutely. The major crux of the case presented by Dolan to an arbitrator when he tried to get the final four years of Brown's contract voided centered around Larry Brown's illegal actions, namely calling other team's GMs to try to get deals done without the consent of his own GM!
Brown poured on the pressure via the media, sensing Isiah's weakness. Isiah already had tons of enemies he made: superagent David Falk and his clients; Bill Simmons of ESPN, who he personally threaten. The perfect storm of Larry Brown's media dopes, combined with Bill Simmons, a noted Isiah hater now armed with a personal gripe, and others who just went with the wave, lead to an incredible backlash against Isiah Thomas' GM skills that still defies logic to this day. If you read any of these articles, you would think Isiah Thomas was the worst GM of all time. In fact they attacked every facet of his resume - his reign as CBA owner (what does that have to do with being an NBA GM?), his coaching reign in Indiana (again, how does that relate to his NBA GM job?), on down to every transaction he made as Knicks GM. The Eddy Curry trade suddenly became the dumbest trade ever. As was the drafting of Renaldo Balkman at #20, as if the 20th pick in the 2005 draft should have been used on the second coming of Jordan.
The end result, even after all that, is that Dolan refused to fire Thomas or Brown. Brown, unable to be satisfied to do just the job he was hired to do (COACH!), had to essential get himself fired. He did that by telling James Dolan that his plan for the team was to cut Marbury and FRANCIS, despite having $90 million dollars left on their contracts, despite being 28 years old and still useful. Cut them. Including the player just four months earlier you had to have as your point guard.
James Dolan showed him the door. Not only that, but so angry was Dolan that he tried his hardest to get that contract voided. He was pretty vengeful, and remains that way to this day, rightfully so.
There are those that argue (like The Assimulated Negro) that when it was time to choose between Brown and Thomas, Dolan should have choosen Brown. We tend to agree that if the choice was clean, maybe. But in this case, underhandedly going after someone's job, discrediting him, his players, the team, and never showing any willingness to work with him, makes us believe that Dolan would have been a fool for promoting Brown.
Keep this mind Philly fans. Brown is already laying the groundwork for a takeover. Maybe he should just be given total control from the get go, because if not we know what can happen. Better yet, Philly fans, do yourselves a favor. Heed The Warning. Hope he takes the Bobcats job instead.
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Starting backward:
3. Patience. He took crap, and crap was good for 33 wins. You have to throw out last year's record (that falls upon Brown), but the negative fallout from last season contributed to the slow start this season. Since their 4-9 start, the Knicks were a .500 team (aka good enough for a 40-42 win season); they are slowing down due to a plethora of injuries right now, but we still see them getting to 37, 38 wins. Which would equal .500 record since the 4-9 start. So if you want to accuse me of convenience in discarding the slow start this season, go ahead. But I think it would be reasonable to expect this team to win at least 40 games next season. Any less, and yes, I'll blame Isiah. But the point is the team is moving forward, okay?
2. Marbury is a selfish guard, but also a talented guard who is capable of carrying a team on his back when he is on. He is a former All-Star. Repeatedly. So for him to get bashed as much as he does is probably not normal. Certainly most "fans" don't get that perception from watching the games or seeing Marbury's career stats; my point was the media discredited Marbury, and the typical non-diehard Knicks fan who doesn't watch the games enough, but reads the papers, brought into it. Yeah he's not a great passing guard, I've gone on record many times criticizing what a poor passer he is (not even the question of whether he wants to pass or not, just the actually passes he throws are awful). Still, he is better than half the starting points in the league (Smush Parker, Earl Watson, Jamaal Tinsley, Jamal from Orlando, et al... I'll have to rank the point guards later, but I would guess Marbury would fall in the 13-18th range; higher in pure skill, but lower when age and contract are factored in).
1. Yeah, having Iverson (Hall of Fame, top-50 player) in his prime wasn't a factor. Did Brown draft Iverson? If not, crediting Brown for "building" that team (which was sh*t awful, except for Iverson) is like crediting Danny Ainge for that season Paul Pierce (with some help from Walker) almost carried the Celtics to the Finals. Rod Thorn "built" the Nets team that made it to the Finals. From scratch. Brown has yet to build a team from scratch... let's see what he does in Philly.
Larry Brown didn't build the Sixers, Pat Croce acquired some role players to put around Iverson that complemented him well and the Sixers played well in a weakening Eastern Confrence. Along the lines of the warning, I have a now former co-worker, who's a big Piston fan who gave me the warning when we got LB. Brown is a great coach, when you have a the front office structure in place to control his ego, low media influence, and most importantly strong minded veterans, LB is death to young player development. The Knicks have none of these. Croce was a big personality in Philly when LB was there(I was living down there at the time), and he managed mend the relationships that Brown freyed. Allen Iverson is the kind of guy who really doesn't care what people think of him or say about him, including LB so he really couldn't get under his skin like he did with Marbury, but it wasn't for lack for trying. Don't forget LB was the coach when AI gave his infamous practice press conference. Philly and Detroit are one newspaper towns, and a lot of the time those newspapers are talking about Hockey(Detroit) and Football(Philly). New York has these henchmen(I mean you Mitch Lawrence) that always up to take negative crap, esp. from a coach and put it as gospel in newsprint. I'll finish this a double warning to Jordan and the Bobcats, DO NOT ALLOW LARRY BROWN TO COACH YOUR YOUNG PLAYERS. He will destroy their confidence, have a tough game, LB will be talking about how you killed the team, make a mistake, enjoy the pine for about 3 games or so.
On Marbury, it was clear to me that for the first 1/2 of the season last year that he was attempting to run the plays and do the things that Brown wanted. And how did he get rewarded, by getting killed every week in the papers. If Steph perfect no, as SML said, sometimes he makes passes that boggles the mind, but he's a lot better than he gets credit for. Just watch the offense when Nate or Francis is running the point.
Sneaky move by Zeke! I kill him all the time so I have to tip my hat when he does it right. Maybe Randolph Morris can start at power forward? How good is he? He looked good against Kansas. What a weird turn of events.
Brown brought in the guys to surround Iverson. Something no other coach was able to do before him, and something no one's figured out since.
Brown to NY was a train wreck from the get-go. It was obvious to everyone, except Isiah and Dolan, apparently, that the roster he was inheriting was full of the wrong type of players to play his style of basketball. Either he was going to clean house, or they were going to be terrible.
This Sixers team, on the other hand, has the pieces in place already to play his type of ball (team ball, tough defense.) They'll have three picks in the first round for him to play with, some cap space next year, a ton of cap space the year beyond, and he won't be at odds with anyone in the organization no matter what role he assumes.
I was sure he would come back about a month ago, now I don't know, but if he does, I'm in favor of it. He's a proven commodity on the bench, and he'll be coming into a situation where he doesn't have to deal with egos bigger than his own.
Isiah vs. LB is not a zero sum game. It is possible to believe they both did/have done a poor job as Knick authority figures. The question I come back to when comparing the two is this: can any of their moves be defended?
Isiah has made some horrendous mistakes (signing Jerome James, allowing a trade for Francis to happen, signing Brown without getting rid of Marbury first, not getting lottery protection for the ’06 first round pick in the trade for Curry when he was bidding against himself) in his GM tenure. There were also some positives (picking Frye, Lee, and Blackmon, trading for Curry, signing Crawford). A mixed bag, but he could be Kevin McHale.
Can you say anything positive about LB’s tenure? He alienated his veterans, didn’t develop his young players (he thought playing Maurice Taylor almost 20 minutes a game was a good idea), and put together a rotation that only a six year old on his second box of Sugar Frosted Chocolate Bombs could match for lack of attention span. If he pushed for the Francis trade (I am not naive enough to fully believe either LB or Isiah, but the fact that Trevor Ariza, a player who had fallen so far in LB’s doghouse I’m shocked he was allowed to sit on the bench was a part of the trade leads me to lean towards Team Isiah’s version of the facts), between the salary cap status of the Knicks and Francis’ well known status as a malcontent, that is reason alone to fire him.
Was the team any good when he got there? Nope. Did he have his type of players? Not in the least. Did he mentally throw up his hands by January (right after Marbury injured his shoulder) and stop coaching? Yep. Did he then try (and fail) to win a political war against Isiah, whose strongest trait may be his Machiavellian streak? Uh-huh.
I don’t see any defensible major actions taken by LB during his time as Knicks coach.
Yeah, TwoNuse brings up a good point - stating Larry Brown was terrible for the franchise doesn't equal saying Isiah Thomas is good. I don't want to get it confused. This post is purely about what Larry Brown did to destroy the franchise, and to warn the next team that no matter how much you welcome his presence, every team he's left has felt burned.
As for Zeke, just to clarify our position once again: we feel he is not the worst GM in the league, despite what you have heard through the media. We feel that he has not done a great job yet, but he deserves a chance to either prove himself capable or fail. And, if you want to know how we relate the Larry Brown fiasco into this - there were reasons beyond his control for hiring Brown and giving him control (see Dolan, media). Given that, we basically have taken the position that this is season one of the Thomas reign.
We won't forgive the mistakes (James, not getting lottery protection for this year's pick, etc), nor let him slide because of his good decisions (the draft picks, the Curry trade, the Rose trade, too - we know what Lee can do, and if Collins turns out to be anything decent, that trade is well worth it). What we are saying is: everything is a wash to this point; where is Isiah going to take us from here, with total control?
Will he lead this team, which is young and growing, to another, even small, step forward next season? Even just 43 wins and (another, hopefully) playoff appearance would be good for us. Because the way the team looks now, 08-09 is the real big year - the young players will be in their third season together; plus there will be lots of cap room thanks to Marbury, Francis and Rose's contracts. We feel those fans that complain most about Isiah should exhibit patience - this isn't Layden doing nothing for three years, except giving away Sprewell and Camby. We won't go so far as to predict success, but we feel the possibility that he will is quite feasible.
And for the record, saying Brown brought in the players to surround Iverson = built the team is the equivalent of saying that adding a chimney to a house equals building the house. Um, the biggest piece of that team is Iverson. I mean, who are you giving Brown credit for: McKie? Snow? Tyrone Hill? George Lynch? Geiger? Todd MacCulloch? Kevin Ollie? Raja Bell (nonfactor)? Rodney Buford? I know - Jumaine Jones!
That team's best five players were Iverson, Iverson, Iverson, Iverson, and Mutumbo's elbows. Given credit to Brown for building that team is insulting. To Iverson.
The Sixers had Iverson, Iverson, Iverson, Iverson and Iverson for 10 other years and never did anything. Brown went out and got Mutombo, he brought Lynch in to play defense and grab rebounds, he surrounded Iverson with the right complimentary players. You can credit Croce if you want, but Brown was pulling the strings.
One player can't make it alone, Brown brought in the type of guys who didn't need the ball, and would play defense/rebound do the dirty work around him. Building a team doesn't stop w/ the superstar, that's where it starts.
And the Knicks are on the hook for $46.8M for Marbury, Francis and Rose in '08-'09. They don't get any kind of cap relief until the following year, '09-'10.
http://www.hoopshype.com/salaries/new_york.htm
Whatever improvements the Knicks are going to make over the next 2 seasons are going to happen with a roster very similar to the one you see today. Unless Zeke can find even worse contracts to pick up in the mean time, which is entirely possible. (Willie Green can be had for the right price).
Just a few quick points:
1. You don't have to warn Philly fans. Brown was here, and he put together a team that made it the finals by filling the roster with "his guys." Isiah hasn't done that anywhere he's been.
2. Brown didn't turn Marbury into a selfish egomaniac, God did. There are thousands of T-Wolves, Nets and Suns' fans who will vouch for that. Not to mention a bunch of teammates.
3. If you're saying it was Brown's fault, and Isiah made significant improvements to this roster over the past two years, then essentially, you're saying throw out last year's record. If you do that, then the Knicks haven't taken a step forward at all. The year before Brown their record was 33-49, this year they're going to finish maybe 2 or 3 games better than that. His uncanny eye for talent and bold moves have amounted to 2 or 3 games, tops. And how much money has he spent for those 2 or 3 games?
Dolan made the wrong choice, this franchise was headed in the wrong direction when Brown came to town, and although he did it the wrong way, what he was trying to do was get "the right kind of players" into town to turn things around. Look at the roster Isiah put together, the Knicks have what, 4 point guards, none of whom is really a point (I guess the jury's out on Collins), at the time Isiah had stockpiled 6'7" power forwards. The roster didn't then, and doesn't now, even come close to resembling a roster that's going to contend for a title.
Brown has made his share of questionable moves in the past (drafting Darko, for one), but he also never made a stop in his long coaching career without taking that team to the playoffs, until NY. You can't just throw out that history, Dolan and Isiah knew what they were getting when they hired him, they just chose to ignore him and stick with Isiah, who hadn't proved a thing up until then, and still hasn't.