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No matter. This was Larry Brown at his best, good-mouthing everyone and wading in schmaltz.
He was, as one would expect, disappointed in his one year with the Knicks. But he said it in a way that made his local failure have cosmic implications.
“I wish I could have done better for them, for this league, for this franchise,” he said. “I think it’s important for our league that the Knicks keep getting better.”
He kept returning to that refrain: the NBA needs the Knicks to return to greatness. There’s no doubt that would be a consummation devoutly to be wished in league headquarters. It's just that he kept saying it so often, you wondered why he didn’t add — just once — that it wouldn’t hurt if his own team, the Bobcats, showed a shred of competence somewhere along the way.
Oh, he talked about the team’s prospects and Jordan’s determination as G.M. to create a winner. But as he continued to talk about the Knicks and the wonderfulness of the Garden, you realized that the Knicks is the team he loves and all the others he’s coached are just challenges to be taken on and then discarded as soon as something better comes along.
He’s a coach. It’s in his blood. And he doesn’t care what the name is on the team’s jerseys. He’ll coach any team, anywhere, at any time.
He’s proved that in a coaching life that began in 1972 with the Carolina Cougars of the old ABA and continued through one more ABA team, two college teams, and eight NBA teams. Except for the Knicks, he’s always made his teams better. He remains the only man to win an NCAA title — with Kansas — and an NBA title — with Detroit.
He’s 68 years old now, and he says he knows that when he looks in the mirror. But he doesn’t feel it.
“I still think I can help the sport and teach the game,” he said.
After all his travels and travails, you’d think he’d have hung it up after Isiah Thomas fired him from the job he said he’d always dreamed of. But, like Joe Paterno and Bobby Bowden, Brown gives the impression of being a man who wouldn’t know what to do if he wasn’t on a sideline. For him, coaching isn’t a job but a joy.
“I’ve never worked a day in my life, and I have no intention of retiring now,” he said.
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