Sports: Larry in Winter

It begs the question, finally, of why. But it begins to make sense, if you go all the way back with Brown. At age seven, he lost his father to a heart attack; afterward, he lived a hand-to-mouth, always-on-the-move existence with his mother and older brother Herb on Long Island, with at least four different addresses, a relative’s or some temporary place where the ceiling paint would start snowing on the boys’ beds. Sayonara — somewhere else had to be better. Better to keep moving than to keep suffering like this. And hoops, it was Larry’s gift, and his escape. It’s been a lifelong pattern. Getting away from Allen in Philly, the possibility of coaching LeBron James in Cleveland, the certainty that he could turn the New York Knicks around …


BUT THERE ARE stories like this, too:

Rego, the Sixers equipment manager, argues that a man should be judged by how he treats those beneath him on the food chain, and Rego certainly was, since he did Brown’s laundry. “When my mother passed away the morning of Game 2 of the Finals and we were in L.A., he looked out for me the whole time. He said, ‘Don’t think you’re not with family. You’re with your second family.’ Before the game, he had the players do a moment of silence for her.

“Coach taught me how to be a man,” Rego says.

And Billy King, for one, thinks Brown’s career of wanderlust makes perfect sense. “Larry was smarter than everybody else,” says King. “Get out before they get you. If he stays too long, and begins to lose, then what happens? They begin to say, ‘Larry can’t coach anymore. Larry’s lost it. Larry can’t relate to today’s players.’ He can survive the way he does it.”

“For as much as people say I move all the time,” Brown, ever defensive, says, “this is my family’s 10th year here. My kids go to school here. The people are great here. I feel at home here.”

As Brown prepares for his next job — and King fully believes there will be another one, saying, “Larry’s still one of the best coaches in the NBA. It’s foolish that he’s not coaching” — he reflects back to what might have been, had he stayed here, or there, or anywhere, for that matter. He is growing wistful again. He can’t just disappear, fade away and tell lies on a golf course.

“I was thinking about it the other day,” he says. “I was happiest as an assistant at North Carolina, back in ’65-’67. I was still young. If I had it to do all over again, I’d stay in one place. I would’ve been a college coach forever. But my career has been a pretty incredible experience. That’s why I don’t want to stop.”