Mike Celizic

In Detroit, the columnists are writing Larry Brown’s valedictory, assuming that the awkward silence on the part of both team and coach is being kept merely so that both sides can figure out a way to part without it looking as if either the Pistons threw him off the island, or Brown left in a huff over some imagined slight.

In other words, the theories hold, Brown’s bags are already packed; he’s just trying to figure out a graceful way to say goodbye.

“Larry Brown” and “graceful exit” are not combinations of words that appear often in the same manuscript, let alone sentence. The only thing you know for sure when you hire him is that he will be off to wherever his personal siren leads him, usually sooner rather than later.

But he hasn’t left Detroit – yet. And if I have anything to do with the Pistons, I don’t want him to leave, either. I don’t care if he’ll stay just one more year, I want him for the very simple reason that he’s the best coach there is. Keep him and you have your best shot at another title. That’s not to say that no one else can win with the Pistons. Flip Saunders, the man most often mentioned as a replacement for Brown, is a fine coach and capable of taking a title, too. It’s just recognizing that Brown is the best, and if you can have the best, you do it.

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The sideshow that comes with Brown is just that – a lot of noise and light and voices barking at the passing crowd. The Pistons’ players paid it no mind this year, and there’s no indication that they lost the title because of the rumors of Brown’s possible departure. Instead, the players seem genuinely fond of their coach. As professionals themselves, they understand the game is a business, and those involved in it do what they feel they have to do.

If Brown comes back, they’ll play for him. And he’ll do the best job of coaching he can. When he talked during the playoffs about having discussions with Cleveland about becoming the Cavs’ team president, he delivered a whiney speech about how he’d never short-changed any of his multiplicity of jobs. As self-serving – and self-pitying – that speech was, it was true. Brown keeps giving full effort right up to the moment he hails a cab for the next plane to somewhere else.

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