What is perhaps most noteworthy about the media furor surrounding Larry Brown’s tasteless need to be wanted yet again — in the middle of his current team still contending for an NBA championship— is that the media hasn’t chased this type of story down more often in the past.
The media — including NBA Hall-of-Famer Bill Walton — have argued strenuously that Brown is hypocritical at best in this scenario. The man who constantly preaches about “doing things the right way” is certainly multi-tasking — negotiating by day to become the top man with the Cleveland Cavaliers, while coaching the defending champion Pistons by night.
Who knew that being paid millions of dollars a year to coach wasn’t a full-time job?
The fact that Brown has been disingenuous with the media, given only evasive non-answers, only makes things worse— and will appear even more so when he is indeed announced as the new boss of the Cavaliers within the next few days, or as soon as the Pistons are eliminated.
The media will have made this all up, right? It will just be coincidence if (when?) Brown ends up with the Cavaliers?
This latest escapade paints Brown as someone chronically in need of adulation, of being chased, of being wanted and needed— and at a higher and higher salary, of course, after he has already earned millions upon millions in the game.
All of which might be acceptable— even to his media friends— if it weren’t for the fact that he has been chasing his next job while still being paid handsomely to do a pretty important job right now.
All that said, this happens all the time in sports.
Before the current coach of the Michigan State football Spartans took the MSU job a couple of years back, word was that his then players found out about his new appointment while on the sidelines of a Bowl game, no less.
He must have forgot to tell his players first, before the media found out.
No doubt one of this fellow’s first speeches to his new bright-eyed college players was about dedication, commitment — and loyalty.
All these values — and words— only seem to matter to players, coaches or executives, until the opportunity to “better” themselves (or in the case of executives, their team) comes along, even if they are still under contract.
How many times do we see a General Manager fire a baseball field manager or hockey Head Coach, and within hours, if not minutes, announce the new manager or coach?
This means, in plain English, that the negotiations were already not only underway, but that a deal was signed, sealed and agreed upon— before the current field boss had even been given his pink slip.
This happens all the time, and virtually no one says a word. No one stands up and says, “hey, wait a minute. You mean you, as a GM, actually hired another guy when you had not even shown the professional courtesy — and intestinal fortitude — to tell your current guy he was gone?”
No one seems to care. It’s an accepted part of how things are done in sports.
When players openly speculate in mid-season of about their impending free agent status…when GM’s play ‘hire the new guy before we axe the old guy’… when NFL stars demand to renegotiate one year into a 7-year contract, should we be surprised that ego-driven individuals feel, for some reason, the urgent need to set themselves up for their next gig before they have even finished with what they owe their employer in their current post?
Does anyone remember Mike Keenan, the summer after he had coached the Rangers to their first Stanley Cup in 40 years, back in ’94? Oh, we all heard about contract technicalities that were supposedly not lived up to, making Keenan a “free agent”, at least in his own mind.
Yet he was suspended by the NHL hierarchy, so something was amiss.
But Keenan was nonetheless gone — gone, gone, gone, some would suggest before he had even finished coaching in the playoffs that year with New York.
When do these kinds of suspicious negotiations take place? Does anyone have qualms of conscience in these circumstances?
Evidently not.
The only surprise, as I said at the outset, is that the media has chosen the Larry Brown case to make such a fuss.
The truth is, it happens all the time.
