Mike Celizic

When you hire Larry Brown, you know what you’re getting, which is why it should be neither a shock nor a disappointment if he leaves Detroit after the playoffs and resurfaces as the president of the Cleveland Cavaliers. In 33 years, he’s had 10 coaching jobs, and even my math is good enough to tell you that works out to an average of 3.3 years per job. So, although it might be an early exit if he takes his well-worn luggage to Cleveland after this season, his inevitable leave-taking wouldn’t be far away.

It’s way too late in the game to climb on Brown’s case for being a vagabond. That angle worked 20 years ago, when he was still relatively young and his broken promises of eternal devotion could still give offense. We know now beyond any doubt, reasonable or otherwise, what Brown is, and we no longer have any right to be offended when he notices a greener pasture next door and moves to it.

To expect him to do otherwise is to expect a wolf to turn down a lamb chop.

By the same token, it is absurd for Brown to express indignation at the multiple reports of his imminent departure attributed to the usual unnamed suspects. He knows his history and his psyche better than anyone, and he has to expect that when a rumor surfaces about him leaving, our inclination is to believe it. After all, when has Brown given us cause not to? In his mind, when he says he’s taking a job for life, he’s not talking about his life, but that of a mayfly.

I can understand why he’d want to deny that he’s leaving. More than 20 years ago, he had taken the Nets to the playoffs when word leaked that he already had taken the head job at the University of Kansas. The Nets promptly lost their postseason series as the papers wrote about nothing but Brown’s departure.

No manager or coach wants to talk about next year before this year is over. But they also want to be sure of what they’ll be doing next year. That’s how these situations arise. Where the parties involved err is in their thinking that they can keep anything secret in this day and age.

Brown says he doesn’t want to coach anywhere but in Detroit, and he says he wants to coach. But he also has admitted he has health problems that, while not life-threatening, make it difficult to coach. He is facing surgery in the off-season and still doesn’t know if he will be able to coach next season, even if he wants to.