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Neat article on Mike Brown -
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/...d-now-on-the-other-side-of-cavaliers-rivalry/
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/...d-now-on-the-other-side-of-cavaliers-rivalry/
The simplest of get-to-know-you questions often stumps Mike Brown: Where are you from?
“Well…” Brown said. “See, I usually just have to explain.”
He was born in Columbus, but can’t rep that. His family moved to Okinawa, Japan before his first birthday, but didn’t stay long. Brown’s father was in the Air Force, which meant a nomadic youth. There were stops in Tucson, Colorado Springs and three different bases in Germany. He graduated high school in Würzburg. He was never in one place for more than three years.
“I tell people my parents are from Philadelphia,” Brown said. But that doesn’t count. So where then? Where does Brown feel most connected?
“The longest I’ve lived in a house is in Cleveland,” Brown said. “So technically my boys think of Cleveland as home.”
Brown’s a Bay Area resident now. He lives in Oakland, near Lake Merritt. He’s the Warriors’ lead assistant coach. This weekend, he’s drawing up substitution patterns and scouting the Cavaliers in advance of Monday’s titanic rematch against Golden State’s biggest rival.
But where some Warriors fans see a competitive annoyance, Brown feels a strong connection. Cleveland represents home for his family and the glory days of his professional career. He was the head coach of the Cavaliers two separate times for a total of six seasons, helping boost the franchise to previously unreached heights and guide LeBron James’ legendary career through its formative years.
“He taught LeBron the value of defense,” said ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, who covered Brown from 2005-10. “That’s sort of his part in the LeBron legacy.”
Brown’s coaching life began much like his actual life. He bounced from Denver to Washington to San Antonio to Indiana, ascending from a video intern to a trusted assistant under Gregg Popovich to a lead assistant under Rick Carlisle. By 2005, at only 35, he was one of the hottest young coaching names in the industry.
He interviewed with Atlanta before securing the much sought after Cleveland job. At Brown’s introductory press conference, owner Dan Gilbert brought a clock, telling assembled reporters he was giving Brown time to grow into the role. But veteran coaches were still salivating. Larry Brown’s name hovered. Year 3 LeBron was expected to make a leap. If the team didn’t jump with him, plans could change quick. Brown faced pressure from Day 1.
“When I first got there,” Brown said, “I felt initially, it could go either way.”
The team needed structure, Brown said. He’d learned from Popovich and Carlisle the best way to create that was to hammer defense — every day, every drill and every media session — into a young team’s skull. It could turn them off or rev them up.
The early results were mixed. They won nine of their first 11, then lost seven of nine. Some days they responded well, other days they grumbled. Brown stuck to his defensive script, even as the Cavs lost six in a row in mid-January, dropping to a concerning 20-17.
They hadn’t made the playoffs since 1998. LeBron’s arrival was supposed to change things quickly. But under Paul Silas, they missed the postseason in LeBron’s first two seasons. Brown’s first year task was obvious: End the drought.
At some point in the middle of the season — Brown doesn’t remember the exact opponent — the Cavaliers were in a tight game in the fourth quarter. But the defense was springing leaks. A frustrated Brown called timeout. All season, he’d drilled them to be a ‘show’ team on pick-and-rolls. But he relented. Do whatever you prefer, he told them in the huddle. Sag back, switch, decide on a preference.
“Then LeBron stepped up and said, ‘No! We’re a show team. That’s what we practice, that’s what we’re good at, that’s what we do and we don’t care what the other team does!'” Brown said.
Jolted to life, the Cavaliers went out, locked up and won the game.
“And that’s when we took off,” Brown said. “To me, that was the turning point. It was like, OK, I got my best player believing in this.”
Cleveland won 14 of 17 to close the season 50-32, their first 50-win season since 1993. They faced Gilbert Arenas’ Wizards in the first round. They took a 3-2 series lead, but trailed 113-112 in the closing seconds of Game 6. Washington double-teamed LeBron, forcing a rushed pass to Larry Hughes.
Moments earlier, Brown inserted sharpshooter Damon Jones, who hadn’t played all night, as a just-in-case offensive sub. Washington’s overloaded defense left Jones open in the corner. Hughes found him. Jones hit the game-winning, series-clinching jumper with four seconds left. The Cavaliers advanced to the second round. Mission more than accomplished in Year 1 for Brown.
“It wasn’t just LeBron necessarily winning the game or the series for us,” Brown said. “He made the pass, but Damon hit the shot. So we started to feel like we had a team.”
The momentum spilled over into Year 2 under Brown. They won 50 games again thanks to the team’s established backbone. Their stingy 98.9 defensive rating was fourth best in the league.
The Cavs swept the Wizards in Round 1, beat the Nets in Round 2 and then pulled off an upset of the powerful Pistons in the East Finals when LeBron famously dropped 48 points in Detroit to steal away the series. In only his second year, Brown had already helped the franchise to its first NBA Finals in its 37-year history.
“It was a bit quicker than I expected,” Brown said. “But we had belief. We were a grind out team. The pieces fit who we were.”
But the Finals exposed what they lacked: Top-tier title talent around LeBron. The Spurs and their three All-Stars swept Cleveland with ease. He didn’t have enough help.
“I always challenge people to tell me who our starting five was that year,” Brown said. “And I don’t think there’s a single person who has gotten it when I’ve hit them off the cuff.”
The answer: Larry Hughes, Sasha Pavlovic, LeBron, Drew Gooden and the aging Zydrunas Ilgauskas. “We had solid players on the team, great guys, but we didn’t have guys who were perennial All-Stars,” Brown said.
That would become an issue in the ensuing years, as LeBron’s free agency neared, the pressure mounted and the playoff disappointments piled up. Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett teamed up in Boston and took them out in 2008.
The Cavaliers won a franchise-record 66 games in 2009. They had homecourt throughout the playoffs. But they were upset by Dwight Howard’s Magic in the East Finals. Brown’s coaching tactics were criticized. In a crucial Game 4, Brown deployed LeBron as a free safety, putting him on Orlando point guard Rafer Alston but having him roam off to help on Howard and the Magic’s other shooters. Alston hit six huge 3s in an overtime win.
“That’s where things started to turn for him,” Windhorst said.
Desperate to bolster its roster, Cleveland traded for a near-retired Shaquille O’Neal before the next season and a declining Antawn Jamison before the 2010 playoffs. It didn’t work. Boston’s Big 3 took Cleveland out again. LeBron ripped off his jersey and played his next game for the Miami Heat.
Brown had a clause in his contract. If he was fired within 10 days of the season, the team didn’t owe his full contract. Nine-and-half days after the Game 6 loss in Boston, Cleveland fired him. Some wondered if LeBron ordered it.
“I can guarantee you with a billion percent certainty that’s not true,” Windhorst said. “Could LeBron have raised his hand and stopped it? Yes. But at that point, LeBron had already decided he was leaving. They couldn’t get a hold of him.”
Brown was out after five seasons in Cleveland. But his family stayed around for another year. They’d grown to love the city. Brown helped coach his youngest son’s youth football team. They remained active in the community.
A year later, Brown got the Lakers job. The family moved to Orange County. His two boys went to national power Mater Dei. But when Brown was fired five games into his second season with the Lakers, his youngest son, Cameron, had a request. He didn’t want to live in Los Angeles. He wanted to move back to Cleveland.
So the family began looking at houses, smaller ones, figuring the situation would be temporary and they’d want to sell quick. Elijah, the oldest, was already in college and Cameron only had two years left in high school. Brown would soon get back into coaching somewhere.
But before they secured a house, Byron Scott was fired by the Cavaliers. The franchise quickly re-hired Brown to a five-year, $20 million deal in April of 2013. At his introductory press conference, Gilbert called firing Brown the first time a “mistake” in hindsight, saying “he’s meant to be here.” The family bought a large house that “we thought we’d be in for a long time,” Brown said.
In Year 1, the team made some strides. He was brought in primarily to teach Kyrie Irving and Dion Waiters the value of defense, much like he did with LeBron. They jumped from 27th to 17th in defensive rating. They went from 24 to 33 wins.
“I had my best year with Mike Brown,” Waiters said. “He could really teach defense. Rule of verticality, stuff like that. You just had to buy in. He knew what he was talking about.”
“I personally felt it was working,” Brown said.
But the general manager who hired him, Chris Grant, was fired in February. David Griffin, a more offensive minded GM, was hired. Kyrie Irving and Brown “didn’t connect at all,” Windhorst said. Irving was up for an offseason extension. Brown was fired in early May after just one season.
“From what I hear, he didn’t think he and I would see eye to eye,” Brown said of Griffin.
For two years, Brown slid into the background, consulting for the Spurs and attending a ton of his two son’s college games. Elijah plays basketball for New Mexico. Cameron plays football for Case Western Reserve in Cleveland.
He watched as LeBron made his storybook return, the Cavaliers added Kevin Love, a third All-Star, and the franchise made back-to-back trips to the Finals. Last June, between Games 3 and 4 of the Finals, Brown — on crutches because of a May fire, which is another story in itself — hobbled into a Cleveland hotel bar and interviewed with Steve Kerr for the Warriors’ lead assistant job.
Days later, he watched LeBron, Ty Lue and the Cavaliers beat Golden State to finally bring Cleveland an elusive title.
“For LeBron and his legacy and what he meant to Northeast Ohio, I was tickled to death,” Brown said.
But now he’s on the other side of things, bringing a unique perspective to the matchup. Because his first season with the Lakers was lockout-shortened, Brown never coached against the Cavaliers in Cleveland. So this past Christmas, Brown entered his former home arena for the first time as an opposing coach.
“Walking into the building and going to the other locker room was a little strange,” Brown said. “Sitting on the other bench was a little weird.”
He may have to get used to it come June.
