| BROWN IN DUMPS or DON'T BELIEVE LARRY'S ACT |
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| Anon A Mus (Anon@anonimous.com) |
2006/06/02 04:36 |
June 2, 2006
NOBODY loves me. Everybody hates me. I think I'll go in the Garden,
and dig up worms.
First you cut their heads off. Then you suck the goo out.
Then you throw the skins away.
Nobody in our Hollis, Queens, cub-den of denigration was allowed to
feel sorry for himself for more than a mil-a-moment. As soon as
someone started sniveling for sympathy, the rest of us would croon our
favorite little nursery rhyme.
Since I've been unwilling to tear myself away long enough from the
mesmeric NBA playoffs to attend Larry Brown's regularly scheduled,
roadside rendezvous with the gang of Knicks' roving reporters, I'd
like to take this occasion to sing him a couple of choruses.
Here is a man who has earned countless millions of dollars while
coaching countless millions of teams over the past three decades; a
man who has high-tailed it out of millions of towns and left Lurch in
a lurch; a man who has sent out resumes apropos his next payday on his
employer-for-that-moment's stationery; a man who has brokered buyouts
or bye-bye outs en route to conjuring up another paradise to kiss
goodbye.
Yet here he is crying on the hard shoulder on a daily basis and
portraying himself as a victim.
And getting away with it!
I guess the gang of roving reporters is so relieved the Greenburgh
police haven't made any arrests and pleased as punch the Knicks'
outgoing coach is granting drive-by interviews he's allowed to
represent any way he wants.
"I feel like a dead man walking," Brown whimpered the other day down
the road a piece from the "rim of silence" at the Knicks' Special
Victims' Westchester Unit.
Between that training facility and headquarters at 2 Penn Plaza, in
the wake of owners James Dolan and Steve Mills putting team president
Isiah Thomas in charge of the Knicks asylum, already there are enough
casualties piled up for several seasons' worth of episodes. Off the
top, I can name Brendan & Michael Malone, Scott Layden, Anucha
Brown-Sanders, Shandon Anderson, Frank Murphy, Joe Favorito, Mike
McCarthy, Don Chaney, Mike Saunders, Jeff Nix, Dick Helm, Lenny
Wilkens, Willis Reed and Dr. Norman Scott, with many more real and
imagined martyrs to be fingered later.
It's being banished to Limbo that's buggin' out Brown more than
anything. Because not a single superior has told him not to believe
what he's read in the papers regarding his inescapable eviction, he
knows his days are numbered.
It's also making Brown crazier than usual that he isn't being loved
unconditionally by his bosses. He never has handled the most minor
rejection from players and the media all that well, and this
conspiratorial cold shoulder by the organization's hierarchy far
out-distances any of that.
Does Thomas deserve to be fired for creating a capsized, 23-win
monstrosity and a polluted atmosphere throughout the Garden where
paranoia and job insecurity run amuck?
As Shaquille O'Neal would say, "Don't even ask such a dumb question!"
But Brown deserves worse punishment for demonstrating abject
disloyalty to the person responsible for furnishing him with his
"dream job" and establishing him as the highest-paid coach ($55
million for five years) in NBA history.
From almost the split second training camp opened in Charleston, S.C.,
Brown complained about the roster Thomas had provided. Almost the
first words out of his mouth once the season began were pot-shots
taken at Stephon Marbury.
It's not as if Brown was clueless about the roster he inherited. It's
not as if he thought the players remotely resembled the
championship-caliber ones he guided to the NBA Finals two straight
seasons in Detroit. It's not as if he could fake surprise when his
Knicks didn't perform like the regal role players he assembled in
Philly to surround Allen Iverson.
The more Brown sounded off, the more misfits Thomas added to his
puzzling puzzle.
In four decades of scrutiny, I've found Brown can be remarkably loyal
and disloyal, as well as neurotically generous and disingenuous. In
most cases, I'm convinced he can't help himself from acting one way or
the other.
Only this time, before the Knicks pay him X amount to vanish, he's
going to pay big time, too, for throwing Thomas on the third rail.
Though one might suspect the blather coming from Brown's newly
repaired bladder might be mollified once he's cut ($40 million) or the
two sides cut a deal ($25 million?).
There's certainly no rush to see Brown stop squirming. Thomas has been
waiting all year to get even. It's not as if the Knicks have to worry
about hiring someone before another team does. Brown's replacement is
the team president. Thomas is banking on Brown blinking before the
other available jobs get taken and leave him with nothing.
Personally, I have my fingers crossed the Knicks and Brown remain an
item - and not just because I'm a hopeless romantic. To me, Camp
Cablevision and Brown are the perfect pairing: The former is stealing
money from its customers while the latter is stealing money from the
former.
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