Brown is acting like a strung-out morphine addict. He was quoted by the Philadelphia Inquirer thusly: "I've got to figure out if I can get a coaching job. I want to get back so bad. I'm so bored."
Geez. I don't know whether to laugh, feel sorry for him, or order him under a suicide watch.
There's more.
"I just miss it. After my last experience (with the Knicks in '05-'06), I just want to go where I can do a better job and move forward."
I haven't seen a lobby for an NBA coaching job this brazen since Dickie Vitale ran around Detroit, telling anyone who'd listen (or even those who didn't) that he wanted to coach the Pistons, some 30 years ago. Vitale's campaign -- aided conveniently by the Detroit media -- was successful, a lot more so than his actual coaching stint.
Should Brown be allowed back onto an NBA sideline? Well, professional sports are filled with enough stool pigeon owners that this is certainly a possibility. The ironic thing -- and what isn't good for Brown's aspirations -- is that the kind of team he'd fit best with is a veteran-laden club that is oh-so-close to a championship; so close that they can taste it. But this is also the kind of team that Brown could do the most damage to; he's likely to barge in and start fixing things rather than tweak them. He's a human double-edged sword, Larry Brown is.
Brown: he just loves this SOO much
And a young team would be foolish to hire Brown, if only because the coach might commit Hari Kari before the year was done.
So the verdict, Mr. Eno?
Brown finds a sucker someday and gets something, anything. His coaching thirst will be quenched. He'll do more damage than good, but at least he wouldn't be bored -- until he gets canned less than two years later.
Thomas will soon be out of work, too. If Donnie Walsh, the Knicks' new Lord of The Hoop, is even one-eighth the genius he purportedly is, he'll can Zeke. If he doesn't, then Walsh should have his stripes yanked off his Armani suit. Only dumb-dumbs keep odiferous reminders of a losing tradition when they're hired with the expressed directive to blow things up and do "whatever's necessary" to right the ship.
Strangely, I think Thomas might actually find a coaching job sooner than the desperate Brown, who he fired from the Knicks two years ago. Isiah can actually coach a bit, and an expulsion from New York would be a good thing for him, frankly. He's the opposite of Brown; Thomas would fit well with a younger, smaller market team that is more apt to listen to him with wide-eyed eagerness, as opposed to eye-rolling disdain, as the Knicks players tend to do with him.
There was a time when I was certain Thomas would surface in Bloomington, Ind., as the coach of his alma mater Hoosiers. That's now not going to happen, with IU hiring Tom Crean the other day.
Thomas and Brown will both be back in the NBA, coaching someone someday. But Isiah should never be allowed the keys to another team's executive washroom ever again. After his shenanigans with the Raptors, the CBA, and the Knicks, you'd think that would be a no-brainer type of declaration.
You'd THINK.
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