Sports: Larry in Winter

Not a good person. Coaching, to hear Brown talk about it, is all about connection, it’s all about getting close to his players, all about what he can do for and with his players. It was as if Davidson was saying he didn’t care, or only cared about Larry Brown.

Larry cares. At Delancey Street Bagels, Calvin Booth happens to walk in. Booth is a journeyman player, a roster-filler on the Sixers, barely hanging on in the NBA, and you know he’s somebody only because he’s six-foot-11, though Booth hunches down a bit, trying to minimize the stares. Until, that is, he sees Brown.

“Hey, Coach!” Booth calls, and comes over.

Brown beams, and makes a fuss, and the tables seem turned for a moment: It’s Booth who’s the big deal, not the ol’ Hall of Fame ball coach, who’s fawning as if Michael Jordan had walked in the door.

“See?” Brown says after Booth leaves. “This is what I like. Players. I love my players. You know, if you don’t love your players, you need to do something else. In any family, you’re going to have problems. I’ve watched other coaches — there could be a knife fight going on behind them — they’re still diagramming a play. They don’t even turn back. If I had words with a player while I was trying to get a message across, it would bother me the whole day. If I had issues with guys, I always like to think, after we separate and come back, it’s always a pretty positive response. To this day, if anything ever happened to my family, Allen Iverson would be the first one to step up.”

Oh, Allen.

The same guy who drove Brown batty and, ultimately, out of the Sixers organization and on to Detroit. Brown shakes his head, and says, “I loved him as much as anyone, but the other stuff … doing the right thing … he’ll drive you insane. I told Allen that Tiger Woods will have a greater effect on kids than Jesus. Think about Tiger. Think about Michael Jordan. Kids flock to them. He missed an unbelievable chance to affect kids positively. Used to drive me nuts. He never understood what I was trying to say.”

Even down to The Suit. It was a few days before the Sixers’ first playoff game in eight years, against Orlando in ’99, and Brown explained to Iverson that as the star player, he would have to do a separate press conference, and it would be nice if he looked the part. Brown had failed before in trying to persuade Iverson to dress formally, with Iverson calling it “selling out.” This time, Iverson relented. He went to Boyds and bought his first finely tailored suit. “The kid looked beautiful,” remarks Brown, always the natty dresser. “So before the game, he takes it off to change into his uniform and leaves it balled up on the floor in front of his locker.”