The Downfall of Lakers coach Mike Brown

By Kels Dayton
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Updated: November 12, 2012

By: Mark Bergin

Mike Brown is a good basketball coach.

He won an NBA championship as an assistant coach with the Spurs in 2003. He guided a young Cleveland Cavaliers team to their only Finals appearance in 2007. Brown even led the Cavs to a franchise-best 66 victories and won the NBA Coach of the Year award in 2009. The following year, his last season in Cleveland, Brown won 61 won games.

Mike Brown has had two great coaching jobs, but has yet to (Rick Bowmer/AP)

Brown is known throughout the NBA as a whiz defensive coach. But as a head coach, an NBA title eludes him, and after a slow start to the season , the Lakers fired him.

Perhaps Brown is better cut out to be an assistant.

Maybe it’s his inability to manage personalities, or the complex offensive systems he has tried to run, but there is no question the lack of a ring ultimately plagues Brown from being considered a great head coach.

You could question whether or not Brown should have even been hired in the first place. Kobe Bryant, and former Lakers Andrew Bynum and Derek Fisher, publicly endorsed former assistant Brian Shaw to replace Phil Jackson, and when Brown became the 22^nd coach in team history, Bryant, the undisputed leader of the Lakers, wouldn’t even comment on the hiring.

Kudos to Lakers management for their awareness of how important a healthy relationship is between the team’s best player and its head coach. Mike D’Antoni’s relationship with Bryant and Steve Nash played a large role in his hiring.

D’Antoni served as assistant coach on Team USA and was a star player in Italy, where Bryant grew up.

D’Antoni helped Nash win back-to-back MVP awards as a member of the Phoenix Suns, and the two mastered an up-tempo pick and roll offense. Nash was 32 when he won his second MVP award during the MVP in 2006, making him the NBA’s oldest MVP since Karl Malone, when he won it at the age of 36 in 1999 (Malone is the NBA’s oldest MVP ever, Michael Jordan is second at 35).

It is not as if the hiring of D’Antoni is going to coax Nash into producing MVP type numbers again, but expect the Lakers to play faster offensively.

In Brown’s five games as coach this season, the Lakers averaged nearly 74 shot attempts per game, in which they shot a productive 47 percent from the floor. In Los Angeles’ two games since Brown’s firing, they have averaged nearly 86 shots per game on 42 percent shooting from the floor.

Old friends Steve Nash and Mike D'Antoni are together again in L.A. (Garrett Elwood/Getty Images)

The Lakers have played at a faster tempo (and attempted more shots) since Brown’s firing, and while they have shot a slightly worse percentage, they have averaged nearly five more points per game. It is no coincidence that the Lakers have won both games (not to mention they have played significantly better defense against weak teams in Sacramento and Golden State).

Bryant might not have hated Brown as a coach, but it is clear they did not have the same chemistry, the same understanding, that Bryant had with Jackson. Those two had a mutual relationship.

There was talk of a 70-win season prior to the dismal start. The Lakers need to play considerably better considering the extraordinary talent assembled on one team.

In Brown’s four loses in five games as head coach this season, the Lakers lost by an average of over nine points per game.

Although it does not count toward the regular season standings in any way, perhaps some red flags should have been raised when the Lakers failed to win a preseason game for the first time in team history (0-8).

Despite the immense talent they possess, it will take time for the Lakers to gel.

The Miami Heat began the 2010-11 season with a 5-4 record, and one could argue that five games was not enough time to give Brown.

But ultimately the Lakers felt that they could not win an NBA championship with Brown as their head coach. General manager Mitch Kupchak and company decided not to wait around to let Brown’s history repeat itself with such loaded roster.

Brown’s firing shows how coaching goes beyond the X’s and O’s of the game. His dismissal signifies the fine line between being a good coach in this league, and becoming a great one.

Mark is a journalism student at the University of Missouri. He serves as a host on KCOU-FM and has written for The Maneater. You can follow him on Twitter @mdbergin.

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