A funny thing happened in the NBA on Friday. The Los Angeles Lakers fired their head coach five games into an 82 game season.
The news of Mike Brown’s dismissal from the Lakers was stunning to most, overdue to some and necessary to the organization. General manager Mitch Kupchak referenced the team’s 1-4 start to the season as just cause for the decision:
“The bottom line is that the team was not winning at the pace that we expected this team to win and we didn’t see improvement…After five games, we just felt that we weren’t winning…We made a decision. Maybe it would have changed a month or three months down the road, but with this team we didn’t want to wait three months and then find out it wasn’t going to change.”
Word?
You removed a man from his post as head coach of the team because you weren’t winning enough after five games? Five games?!? That’s a week and a half’s worth of basketball. After five games, the Celtics were barely better (2-3), is it time to question Doc Rivers? Besides, his team only made it one round further than Mike Brown’s Lakers in 2011-12, and like L.A., Boston is in the business of winning championships. The Knicks are 4-0 after four games. Should James Dolan be prepping a Charlie Weis-like extension for Mike Woodson?
Okay. Obviously, the Lakers had some reason to make this move. Expectations are “championship or bust” after Kupchak gave the roster a facelift this summer and Brown’s coaching performance left much to be desired after the Oklahoma City Thunder gave his Lakers the five-game sweep treatment in last year’s playoffs. And you didn’t get the impression the team captain had his back all like that either.
Yet the Lakers were 1-4 against teams that entering play Monday night have a combined 14-13 record (far from great, but not exactly chopped liver), while trying to include as many as four new players into their eight-man rotation. Two of those players were in the starting lineup and neither of them are healthy. Steve Nash was injured in the second game of the season and hasn’t played since, while Dwight Howard’s back is still not 100%. And speaking of injuries, Kobe is still playing through a foot issue (although he’s been great to start the season).
We should’ve known it was a wrap for Mike Breezy after this.
The point is, you can forget about cohesion and chemistry; Mike Brown only had his full compliment of players for five injury-riddled quarters. So how can one make an accurate judgement of his job performance under these circumstances after only five games?
The only way you can make a move like this is if you’re certain that you can bring in a significantly better option, immediately (more on this later).
Then there’s Erik Spoelstra.
Coach Spo is in a great spot right now. His roster is as deeper now than it has ever been in the “Heatles” era, they’re coming off an NBA Championship (thus alleviating most of the pressure they felt last season), the Heat are off to a solid 6-2 start and with the circus going on in Los Angeles, his team is inexplicably flying under the radar.
Interestingly, Erik Spoelstra was once in a situation similar to the one Mike Brown faced last week. A month into his first season directing Chris Bosh and LeBron James after they teamed up with Dwyane Wade in South Beach, the Heat were just 9-8 and had taken L’s in four of five games.
Then this happened.
Fans and media members alike expected Heat team president Pat Riley to usurp Spoelstra as coach and lead the Heat to a championship (as he did with Stan Van Gundy a few years prior).
Riley instead opted to back Spoelstra. His patience was rewarded with a trip to the NBA Finals in 2011. Though Miami came up short, Spoelstra was able to move forward with his troops knowing he had some job security the start of last season after the Heat signed him to a multi-year contract extension. And though there were bumps in the road, the Heat organization was again rewarded for their patience in 2012, as Spoelstra guided them to the franchise’s second NBA title.
Pat Riley never gave up on his protégé. Just another reason why he’s “The Don”.
It’s fascinating that the Lakers did not elect to exercise the same forbearance with Brown after watching the Heat win a championship with Spolestra not even five months ago. Moreover, the parallels of the career paths of these two men are so striking, you would think they were actually the same guy.
Each ran the point for a West Coast Conference team at the same time during the early 1990s (Spoelstra at the University of Portland, Brown for San Diego State). Though neither played in the league, both Brown and Spoelstra started their careers as video coordinators and advanced scouts in the NBA, working their way up the ranks while earning a “gym rat” reputation. They both served as assistant coaches on championship winning teams and are disciples of defensive minded coaching legends (Brown with Gregg Popovich in San Antonio in 2003, Spoelstra with Riley in Miami in 2006). Born eight months apart, both men coached megastars in their first head coaching gigs and and led that team to the NBA Finals within their first three years on the job (Brown with LeBron James and the Cavaliers in 2007, Spoelstra with Wade and the Heat in 2011).
Knowing what Spoelstra was able to accomplish with a star-laden roster, a coaching acumen founded on hard work and defensive principles and a little bit of patience and a vote of confidence from the front office (and not phony bologna one Lakers executive VP Jim Buss [and Kobe] gave Brown last week), why the Lakers would be so swift to remove Brown this season is hard to understand…
Unless they KNEW Phil Jackson was coming back to coach the team.
According to reports however, the Lakers and Jackson were unable to come to terms for several reasons, despite the fact that Jackson was the team’s first choice.
Enter Mike D’Antoni, the man the Lakers inked a three-year deal with to be their new head coach early Monday morning.
D’Antoni can best be described as: a one-dimensional coach who only has a clue about one side of the ball. A guy whose teams have never won anything of importance when he’s been at the helm. A guy who has racked up multiple 60-win seasons but has never coached a team past the conference finals. A guy who parted ways with his last employer because, while in a pressure-packed coaching situation, he lost his superstar player’s confidence in him. A guy who coached a star player to multiple league MVP awards and won NBA Coach of the Year, yet his lack of control over his team served as his downfall in the past.
Well, since we’ve been making coaching comparisons, that quick bio sounds eerily similar to another NBA coach…
MIKE BROWN!
Except Mike Brown actually led a team to a conference championship, unlike D’Antoni.
Yeah. That’s twice now you’ve failed upwards bruh. Congratulations.
It has been well documented that Mr. “Seven Seconds or Less” knows little about defense and his team’s defensive ranks corroborate that notion (never higher than 23rd in the league). And while the Lakers offense will likely pick up with D’Antoni in place of Brown, there is a bigger issue at hand. Jim Buss replaced a coach who was not a good fit with the Lakers with another coach who will not be a good fit with the Lakers.
Call me old fashioned, but defense wins championships in the NBA. Even though Mike Brown’s offensive ineptitude was much maligned (and D’Antoni apologists will cite this as a reason why the move was necessary) it was the Lakers defense that was keeping them out of the winner’s circle. Sure, Brown was somewhat responsible for this, but providing him with the best defensive center since Hakeem (apologies to Ben Wallace) would go a long way towards rectifying this issue, if Brown was ever given the opportunity.
Sidebar: Years ago, I attended a coach’s clinic featuring Mike Brown and his staff. In an effort to reach out to the community, Brown & Co. held a clinic for area middle school and high school basketball coaches, providing them some pointers to take back to their aspiring young hoopers. The clinic lasted three hours; Brown spent 2 hours and 45 minutes on defense. It was a complete breakdown of defensive strategies, sets, rotations and philosophies, yet he crammed offense in only during the final 15 minutes of the session. I was amazed. It seemed as though the man knew nothing about how to coach offense, but he was a truly wizard with defense.
The Lakers have the reputation as one of the shrewdest franchises in the history of American sports. The decision to replace Mike Brown with Mike D’Antoni is not one that conjures up memories of L.A. pulling off the 1979 heist that landed them James Worthy in 1982 (drafted #1 overall, three weeks after winning the ’82 Championship). Even LeBron (of all people) thought Brown got a raw deal. When he officially takes over, D’Antoni could easily lead the Lakers to a 55-win season. But it won’t matter because they will not achieve their one and only goal of winning the 2012-13 NBA Championship.
Ultimately, this is on Jim Buss. So anxious to prove he can run daddy’s team (his father, Dr. Jerry Buss owns the Lakers), so quick to make things right after his Andrew Bynum experiment failed to produce the next face of the franchise, too stubborn to kiss and makeup with Phil Jackson. What happens if D’Antoni drops four of his first five as head coach? What then? After all, he did it in Phoenix (he took over at game 22).
We didn’t have the Lakers winning it all anyway, but the reality is, they were closer to winning a title with Mike Brown.
Just ask Pat Riley.