Mike Brown's "Evolution"
A media member whose biggest career break has been knowing LeBron James since high school and thus being hired by various outlets to follow James around throughout his career just wrote a piece about Mike Brown's supposed "evolution" as a head coach. Media members (1) often tend to be wrong and (2) rarely admit that they have been wrong, so when something happens that confounds their predictions they feel compelled to contrive elaborate explanations.
For example, Bill Belichick did an excellent coaching job in Cleveland, but media members perceived him to be surly and so they portrayed him not only as surly (which may contain some degree of truth) but also as incompetent (which was completely false). At age 39 in his first NFL head coaching job, Belichick took over a team that had been 3-13, and by year four the Browns went 11-5 and won a playoff game. How impressive is it to do that in Cleveland? The next time the Browns went 11-5 was 2020, which was also the next time that they won a playoff game. The Browns collapsed to 5-11 in 1995, but that had a lot to do with the disruptions caused by Art Modell announcing that he planned to move the team to Baltimore and little to do with Belichick's coaching.
On the way out of Cleveland, Modell fired Belichick. The next time Belichick was hired to be an NFL head coach, he led the New England Patriots to six Super Bowl titles. Belichick's coaching staff in Cleveland included Nick Saban (who became arguably the greatest college football coach ever), Ozzie Newsome (who later won two Super Bowls as Baltimore's General Manager), and several others who became successful coaches in the NFL or college. Objectively, it seems obvious that a coach who assembled a talented staff like that and who led the team to a playoff win not long after a 3-13 season must have known what he was doing--but Belichick being competent in the early 1990s (after he had already won two Super Bowls as a defensive coordinator, by the way) did not fit the media narrative, so instead we are told that Belichick "evolved" in New England.
If you converted what most media members understand about coaching into an explosive device, you would not generate enough power to ignite the smallest firecracker!
It should be obvious that any diligent professional learns and evolves--but the notion that Belichick "evolved" from incompetent bumbler to six-time Super Bowl champion is preposterous, as is the media's obsessive focus on "in-game adjustments." The most important coaching is done in practices. That is when coaches prepare their teams for (1) what is most likely to happen during games and (2) how to react to the various most likely scenarios. If the coach fails at anticipating what is most likely to happen and preparing how to react then he is not going to come up with some magic halftime "adjustment" to save the day; what media members incorrectly call "adjustments" are in reality just the coach implementing the parts of the pre-game plan that are most relevant at that time.
Tom Brown, who played safety for Vince Lombardi's Super Bowl-winning Green Bay Packers, told me that what changed after Lombardi left the team was the attention to detail in practices. Uninformed media members blabber about "in-game adjustments" and are often overly impressed by sideline histrionics, but--as I noted in that article mentioning Brown--the reality is (as I explained) "The importance of coaching is not revealed by sideline tantrums during
games or witty comments in press conferences; the great coaches do their
work on the practice field, outside of the public eye."
Much like Cleveland media members did not like Bill Belichick or understand what he was doing, they did not understand what Mike Brown was doing as the Cleveland Cavaliers' coach (though they may have liked Brown on a personal level more than they liked Belichick).
The season before Mike Brown first became the Cleveland Cavaliers' head coach, the Cavaliers ranked 11th in points allowed, 14th in rebounding, and 19th in defensive field goal percentage. Two years later, with the same frontcourt starters--LeBron James, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, and Drew Gooden--the Cavaliers ranked fifth in points allowed, eighth in defensive field goal percentage, and second in rebounding en route to advancing to the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history. In Brown's final two seasons during his first run in Cleveland, the team went 66-16 (ranking first in points allowed, second in defensive field goal percentage, and seventh in rebounding), and 61-21 (ranking sixth in points allowed, fourth in defensive field goal percentage, and 11th in rebounding). The same guy who is now declaring that Brown has "evolved" was one of many who at that time questioned Brown's ability to make "in-game adjustments." Brown built the Cavaliers into a defensive powerhouse and perennial championship contender, but the media narrative was that LeBron James was singlehandedly carrying a team that lacked talent and was not particularly well-coached--as if James, by himself, could outrebound entire teams and also lock down entire teams defensively. That is not a knock against James--who is one of the greatest players of all-time--but just an objective assessment of what it takes to win over 60 games in back to back seasons, something that no poorly coached team has ever done or ever will do.
If your career is based on following James around and being some sort of confidant to him--and if Brown does not even deign to provide you good soundbites--are you going to praise Brown's coaching or are you going to say that James is a one-man team overcoming bad teammates and bad coaching? That question is not difficult to answer, and the proof can be found in various articles and TV appearances.
After being dumped by the Cavaliers, Mike Brown coached the L.A. Lakers for one season, succeeding Phil Jackson and leading the team to a 41-25 record in the lockout-shortened 2011-12 campaign. The Lakers fired Brown after a 1-4 start in 2012-13, limped into the playoffs under Mike D'Antoni, and did not sniff the playoffs again until player/general manager LeBron James joined the team and acquired Anthony Davis.
The Cavaliers brought Brown back for the 2013-14 season, and he guided the team to a 33-49 record after the squad had won 19, 21, and 24 games in the previous three campaigns. The Cavaliers fired Brown at the end of the season, and Brown then served as a Golden State assistant from 2016-2022, winning three championships to go along with the 2003 title he won as a San Antonio assistant. It is amusing that media members question Brown's coaching ability but two of the most successful head coaches of all-time (San Antonio's Gregg Popovich and Golden State's Steve Kerr) both hired Brown.
This season, Mike Brown inherited a Sacramento Kings team that went 30-52 last season while ranking 26th in rebounding, 28th in defensive field goal percentage, and 29th in points allowed. So far this season, the Kings are 27-20 while ranking 25th in rebounding, 28th in defensive field goal percentage, and 22nd in points allowed. Those are not huge improvements, but Brown's first Cleveland team did not make huge defensive improvements in the first season, either; Hank Egan, then an assistant coach in Cleveland, explained to me that when teaching defensive principles to a team it takes until "deep into your second year before you’re getting to the point that it is second nature."
The notion that Brown has "evolved" from a defensive coach into an offensive coach based on a 47 game sample size is as silly as it is premature; Brown inherited a team with a lot of offensive talent and not much of a defensive mindset, so as any smart coach would do he is maximizing their offensive efficiency while also attempting to improve the team's defensive efficiency. I expect the Kings to be better defensively in a year, and possibly even in the second half of this season.
Brown has always been an excellent coach, but in terms of media relations he never found a great niche; you are not going to see soundbite clips of him the way that you do with Gregg Popovich, Steve Kerr, and other popular coaches. Media members resent coaches like Brown because in order to cover him effectively they are forced to either (1) understand the nuances of the game (fat chance!) or (2) come up with catchy narratives. The Mike Brown narrative that has stuck is "Mike Brown is a good defensive coach who does not understand offense and is not good at making in-game adjustments." The Kings' success this season without immediately becoming a defensive powerhouse challenges that narrative, which means that media members either have to admit that the narrative is wrong or else they have to assert that Brown "evolved."
I am not suggesting that Mike Brown is as great at coaching basketball as Bill Belichick is at coaching football--but I am stating that the way that Cleveland media members (and other media members) misunderstood Belichick in the 1990s foreshadowed the way that Mike Brown has been misunderstood and continues to be misunderstood.
Labels: Bill Belichick, Cleveland Cavaliers, Golden State Warriors, L.A. Lakers, Mike Brown, Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs
posted by David Friedman @ 8:26 PM
Real Talk About Media Coverage of NBA Coaching
I correctly predicted the winner of seven of the eight first round series, including both upsets in the #4 versus #5 matchups; my only mistake was favoring Denver over Golden State: the Nuggets took game one on Andre Miller's buzzer-beating layup and then lost four of the next five games. I should have known better than to pick a George Karl-coached team in the playoffs: Karl has a .599 regular season winning percentage but just a .432 playoff winning percentage; compare that to the winning percentages of championship-winning coaches Phil Jackson (.704/.688), Gregg Popovich (.681/.613), Erik Spoelstra (.660/.633), Pat Riley (.636/.606), Rick Carlisle (.587/.515), Larry Brown (.568/.511) and Doc Rivers (.554/.529) and it is clear that neither Karl's playoff winning percentage nor the gaping differential between his regular season/playoff winning percentages suggest that Karl is an elite level coach.
Coaching matters in the NBA, even though some "stat gurus" dispute this. When I picked Chicago to beat Brooklyn I
wrote, "This series features a huge coaching mismatch. TNT's Kenny Smith says
that if a team loses by more than five points then blame the players but
if it loses by less than five points blame the coach; the games in this
series figure to be low scoring and close and I trust Chicago's Tom
Thibodeau much more than I trust Brooklyn's P. J. Carlesimo; this is not
just about in-game adjustments but also about elements of preparation
that give one team an edge over another." Only two of the seven games in the Chicago-Brooklyn series were decided by five points or less--with each team winning one of those games--but five of the games were decided by eight points or less (including the triple overtime contest that Chicago won by eight points) and the Bulls went 4-1 in those games. Brooklyn's other two victories were both blowouts; there is no doubt that the Nets have a more talented team on paper than the injury-ravaged Bulls but the Bulls proved to be a more disciplined and focused squad: the Bulls did all of the "little things" that actually are quite important, such as setting solid screens, executing plays crisply and taking advantage of opportunities to score easy baskets on inbounds plays while also denying Brooklyn similar opportunities.
Bum Phillips once said that Don Shula "can take his'n and beat your'n or he can take your'n and beat
his'n." The Chicago-Brooklyn series very much had that feel; in game seven, the Bulls were without the services of 2011 MVP Derrick Rose (who missed the entire 2012-13 season), All-Star Luol Deng and Kirk Hinrich while the Nets had all hands on deck yet the Bulls took a huge first half lead and never trailed en route to a 99-93 road win: if everything else were kept the same but the head coaches switched sides, I'd be willing to bet that the Nets would have won the series.
Coach bashing is a favorite media pastime but most media members do not have a clue how to determine if a team is well coached or poorly coached. I respect all NBA coaches tremendously and I fully realize that even a bad NBA head coach knows more about basketball than the vast majority of coaches at any other level of the sport; Karl is a very good NBA coach but he seems to be better suited for rebuilding teams/coaching underdogs than he is at extracting the maximum out of 50-plus win teams. Carlesimo was an excellent collegiate coach and he served as an assistant on Gregg Popovich's San Antonio staff so Carlesimo obviously has a very good basketball mind--but as an NBA head coach he has not measured up well in comparison with the best of the best, a category in which Thibodeau clearly belongs.
When I critique coaches like Carlesimo and Karl I am not trying to suggest that I know more about basketball than they do or that I would be a better NBA head coach; in other words, I am not acting like Bill Simmons. I am just doing my job as an NBA analyst by pointing out that, as much as Karl and Carlesimo know about basketball, there are other coaches who are demonstrably performing at a higher level.
Media members do not like to admit being wrong and it is interesting to see the lengths some of them will go to in order to avoid such admissions. Simmons used to regularly bash Doc Rivers' coaching acumen but now Rivers is widely recognized as a great coach so Simmons had to stop degrading Rivers--but did Simmons admit that he was wrong? Of course not! Simmons' story is that Rivers has evolved into being a great coach. Rivers won the 2000 Coach of the Year award in his first season as an NBA head coach after leading the "heart and hustle" Orlando Magic to a 41-41 record with Darrell Armstrong, John Amaechi and Chucky Atkins as the top three players in the rotation. Has Rivers become a better coach in the intervening 13 years? I am sure that he has; I hope that anyone who does something for more than a decade becomes better at it--but the idea that Rivers was a terrible coach who then became a great coach is absurd. Simmons was dead wrong about Rivers and he should just admit it.
Simmons' arrogance is not unique; Cleveland media members still give the Simmons treatment to Bill Belichick, who took over a 3-13 Browns team in 1991 and transformed them into an 11-5 playoff team by 1994. During Belichick's entire tenure in Cleveland the media relentlessly mocked his coaching strategies and his public speaking style. The Browns have not won a playoff game since the 1994 team went 1-1 in the postseason, while Belichick has won three Super Bowls in New England. Belichick is now widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest coaches in NFL history--but do the Cleveland media members admit that they were wrong? Of course not! They insist that Belichick learned from his supposed mistakes in Cleveland and became a much better coach in New England. Sure, that makes sense: he was a dunce in Cleveland but he became a genius in New England--well, if ignorance is contagious then perhaps one could theorize that he caught it from those Cleveland media members! Smart people are much more apt to learn from their mistakes than stupid people, so there is no doubt that Belichick learned from some mistakes that he made in Cleveland but the record before, during and after his time there shows that he did a great job as the Browns' coach. A lot of those very same media members
gave Mike Brown the Belichick treatment during Brown's first term as the Cavaliers' coach and they are no doubt gearing up to do so again as Brown takes over for the fired Byron Scott. We will be told that Brown should hire John Kuester as some kind of "offensive coordinator"--so that the Cavs can hope to replicate the awesome scoring attack that Kuester built during his tenure as Detroit's head coach when the Pistons ranked 29th and 22nd in points scored. Brown will be mocked for talking about his players letting him coach them, even though Hall of Fame Coach Chuck Daly
said exactly the same thing; that statement has nothing to do with being a soft person or a bad leader and everything to do with understanding the nature of the culture in an NBA locker room: if a coach cannot elicit "voluntary cooperation" (Pat Riley's way of referring to the concept mentioned by Daly and Brown) then he cannot function effectively.
Mike Brown does not need me to defend him; he is well paid for his services and he is well respected by people who actually understand the technical aspects of the sport--I just wish that media members covered the league more intelligently, but we are all getting the media coverage that we accept/tolerate; perhaps some day editors and consumers will hold writers/TV talking heads to higher standards but it does not seem like that kind of change will happen any time soon.
Labels: Bill Belichick, Bill Simmons, Boston Celtics, Brooklyn Nets, Chicago Bulls, Doc Rivers, Mike Brown, Orlando Magic, P.J. Carlesimo, Tom Thibodeau
posted by David Friedman @ 3:31 AM
Defensive-Minded Mike Brown Faces Big Challenge in Los Angeles
1)
It is always tough to be the man who follows "The Man."
Phil Jackson won 11 championships in the past 20 years, compiling three three-peats (1991-93 and 1996-98 with the Chicago Bulls, 2000-2002 with the Lakers) plus back to back titles from 2009-2010 after losing in the 2008 NBA Finals. Jackson shattered Red Auerbach's record of nine NBA championships as a coach and it is highly unlikely that anyone will ever approach Jackson's mark, let alone break it. Jackson is a brilliant coach but each of his championship teams also had at least one MVP level player in the prime of his career; Brown not only faces the burden of trying to replace Jackson but Brown inherits an aging team that seems to be declining and is led not by a great player in his prime but rather by a great player
who has logged a staggering number of career minutes and who has sustained permanent damage to important body parts (right knee, multiple fingers).
2)
False perceptions by media/fans and heightened expectations due to Lakers' proud history.
Mike Brown is well respected by knowledgeable NBA observers but he is an easy target for lazy media members and ignorant fans; part of the
L.A. Times' "coverage" of Brown's hiring consisted of reprinting various negative Twitter comments about Brown and another part of their "coverage" consisted of a poll that overwhelmingly showed that Lakers' fans disapproved of the move--a conclusion that these fans reached before Brown had even been formally hired, let alone assembled a coaching staff!
3)
Declining Kobe Bryant, soft Pau Gasol, weak bench, wild card Ron Artest.
Kobe Bryant should have won the regular season MVP from 2006-08 (he only received the honor in 2008) and he was the league's best playoff performer from 2008-2010 but age and injuries have eroded his dominance; he once could score 40 points at will and easily take over games down the stretch but last season Phil Jackson strictly limited Bryant's minutes and greatly curtailed Bryant's practice time in an effort to preserve whatever tread is left on Bryant's tires. The end result was that removing Bryant from the practice court robbed the team of its focus and sense of urgency, while shrinking his playing time cost the Lakers some wins (Bryant not only nailed multiple game-winning shots in the previous season but he
also rescued many games down the stretch with clutch fourth quarter play). Despite the extra rest, Bryant was hardly his usual dominant self during the 2011 playoffs; his sprained left ankle obviously did not help matters but even in games when Bryant seemed to have his usual spark in the early going he faded noticeably down the stretch. The Lakers
were never as talented or deep as some people declared them to be and at this stage of his career Bryant can no longer mask their deficiencies by simply scoring 40 points in a game or dropping 15 points in a fourth quarter. Now would be a logical time for someone to emerge as a legit first option to take some pressure off of Bryant but during the playoffs Pau Gasol did not even look like a decent second option, much less someone who could potentially be willing or able to assume the franchise player mantle. The Lakers' weak bench and Ron Artest's increasing lack of focus/general ineffectiveness are also major concerns but the Lakers' high payroll and the looming NBA work stoppage make it highly unlikely that the Lakers will upgrade their roster. If Mike Brown is going to lead the Lakers to a championship in 2012 he is going to have to do it with an older version of the squad that Jackson could not guide to a single playoff win versus Dallas.
The fact that a premier franchise like the Lakers hired Brown shows just how well respected he is in NBA circles; media members and fans may believe false narratives about Brown's tenure in Cleveland but the reality is that virtually any team in the league would be thrilled to bring Brown aboard. However, even though Brown landed a good job he certainly did not get an easy one; it will be very difficult to coax one more championship out of this version of the Lakers but Brown will be an easy scapegoat if the Lakers do not win the title.
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When I covered the Cleveland Cavaliers I noticed some interesting parallels between Mike Brown and Bill Belichick:
1) Both men revived moribund Cleveland franchises and turned them into legitimate contenders. Brown led the Cavs to the playoffs for five straight years--including two trips to the Eastern Conference Finals and one NBA Finals berth--after the team had gone seven seasons without qualifying for postseason play, while Belichick took over a team coming off a 3-13 season and led them to a playoff victory in just four years; the Browns have yet to win a playoff game since firing Belichick in 1995.
2) Both men have been criticized heavily by the media for being too bland, for supposedly being unimaginative offensively and for getting the opportunity to become a head coach simply by riding the coattails of championship-winning mentors. Brown and Belichick may not have "won" too many press conferences but their teams have won a lot of games. Belichick did much to shed the rap about his conservative offenses by unleashing a devastating, record-setting passing attack in 2007 that helped New England post an unprecedented 16-0 regular season record, while Brown's oft-criticized Cleveland teams annually ranked among the NBA's most efficient and productive offensive units. Gregg Popovich did not start winning championships over night and his protege Mike Brown has not had enough time to fully develop his own coaching legacy but few people are still foolish enough to say that Belichick peaked as a Bill Parcells assistant; in fact, the record shows that Parcells won both of his championships with Belichick playing a prominent role, while Belichick won their only face to face encounter as playoff head coaches and then went on to win three Super Bowls in New England without any input from the "Tuna."
3) Both men received plenty of unsolicited strategic advice from the media "experts" in Cleveland. Point blank, the writers and talking heads in Cleveland had absolutely no understanding of what Belichick was doing with the Browns and their strategic acumen did not improve more than a decade later when Brown transformed the Cavs from a lottery team to one of the top defensive units in the NBA. Once Belichick started winning Super Bowls in New England the media revisionists claimed that Belichick had "changed"; while it is clearly true that any intelligent person changes and evolves it is patently false to assert that Belichick "failed" in Cleveland and then learned how to coach once he arrived in New England. Similarly, Brown did an excellent job during his tenure in Cleveland and I expect him to also do well in L.A., though it will be difficult for Brown to win a championship right now unless the Lakers improve their talent and/or depth.
**********
The idea that Brown cannot coach offense is simply false. Brown made it very clear when he first arrived in Cleveland that his top priority was to fix the Cavs' defense and that only after that was accomplished would he focus on the team's offense; Brown fulfilled both of those objectives, transforming the Cavs into an elite defensive team that also ranked among the league leaders in field goal percentage (third) and points scored (ninth) during his final season in Cleveland.
During his press conference on Tuesday after the Lakers officially hired him, Brown emphasized that excellent defense is the cornerstone to his program because excellent defense is an essential component for any championship team. Brown explained his three primary defensive principles:
1) "Shrink the floor: We don't want anything easy to happen in that paint."
2) "No middle drives: If the ball gets to the middle of the floor there are too many outlets."
3) "Give multiple effort and finish with a contest."
Coach Brown concluded, "Those three things, my players will hear often." Those are certainly three things that the Lakers need to hear--and do--because they failed miserably in each of those departments during their brief 2011 playoff run.
I don't know how good the Lakers will be in 2011-12 because it is not clear how much Bryant has left or what is wrong with Gasol but I am confident that Coach Brown will bring out the best in the team at both ends of the court.
Labels: Bill Belichick, Kobe Bryant, L.A. Lakers, Mike Brown, Phil Jackson
posted by David Friedman @ 4:23 AM
