(The original article was published on January 3 by Jason Lloyd of The Athletic website. The content of The article does not represent The translator’s point of view)
After young Mike Brown was hired as a video coordinator by Nuggets, his first consumption bought a Nissan pickup truck that produced four-wheel two-wheel drive in 1992. This car is equipped with basic style and has no accessories, so Mike Brown’s father gave him a CD player for listening to music on the way to and from the stadium.
Brown often goes along Bryant Street to McNichols Gymnasium in downtown Denver, listening to rap music of Run-DMC or Kool Moe Dee along the way. But every time before entering the parking lot, Brown would turn down the volume and change it to some jazz. Brown knew nothing about jazz and couldn’t understand it at all. The only performer he knew was Kenny G.
As the bottom staff of the Nuggets, Brown did not know what he would be arranged to do next second or who could accompany him. Brown always had the opportunity to go out to work with Burney bikstav. Bikstav, then head coach of nuggets, was also Brown’s first mentor, and occasionally needed a person to take him to get dry cleaning clothes, or simply need a driver. At this time, Brown sitting in the cab must make sure that Kenny G’s jazz is placed in the car, not Rev Run’s rap.
Mike Brown, 52, is going through the first season of coaching the King. Recently, he has a grandson. However, Brown’s position in NBA has always been like a young man. In the summer of 1992, Brown was an intern of the Nuggets with no salary. After his internship, he returned to San Diego University to finish his studies and returned to Nuggets in December 1992 to serve as a full-time video coordinator. He became an assistant coach of the Wizards at the age of 27 and became a coach at the age of 35. Because of his youth, Mike Brown paid too much attention to creating a personal coaching Image and external views, which affected his coaching performance as one of the youngest coach of the league.
The ending of Mike Brown’s two coach Jobs was very embarrassing. Both the Lakers and the Cavaliers were fired after only one year. This person who had long been very concerned about his coaching image, I know how much damage this will cause to my teaching reputation.
But Brown learned to let go of everything during the work of warriors and Coach Cole. That period was equivalent to a six-year treatment process for Brown. Maybe Brown himself didn’t realize how much he needed this experience, which was very important to help him better adapt to the work of coaching the King. In the past 20 years, the King’s team culture has been damaged due to losing, internal problems and unstable performance. Brown has seen all the shortcomings of this team and also the potential of this team.
Brown wants this job, and the King also needs him. Brown, who has a more mature coaching ability, knows very well that he is ready to become the head coach again, a head coach who no longer cares what others think.
The last time the King entered the playoffs was 2006, when Nash was the league MVP and Brown was the Cainiao coach of the Knight, trying to protect his coaching image, and maintain the relationship with young LeBlanc-James.
The king’s 16-year playoff famine is the longest in NBA history. During this period, a total of 11 head coaches were dismissed, and none of them could lead the king to win.
Coach Brown has experienced many ups and downs along the way. A few weeks before James left the Cavaliers to join the Heat in 2010, Coach Brown was fired by the Cavaliers. In the 2012-13 season, Coach Brown was fired after five games in the second season of coaching the Lakers; the following year, after the knight boss gilbert admitted at the press conference that it was a wrong decision to fire brown for the first time, coach brown returned to the knight. However, a season later, the knight fired him.
In 2013, when Vivek-diff bought the Kings in LANNA, he was regarded as the savior of the team in this city. However, these goodwill was soon eroded by the team’s poor record. The King won only 39 percent at the helm of the LANNA diff that season. During his time as King’s boss, the number of wins in a single season never exceeded 40.
Therefore, LANNA Difu also played a joke with the people around him. Why did he support the king’s failure for 16 years? He has only been the king’s boss for 9 years.
However, in these 9 years, LANNA diff has fired 6 head coaches and 3 general managers. The current general manager of King Monte McConnell’s contract also reached the last year, although he was the general manager of King who had pieced together the most talented players for the team over the past 10 years.
The king has two all-star candidates, Fox and Sabonis. General manager McConnell selected Halliburton in 2020 and replaced the latter with Sabonis, an All-Star center who can fight hard, with a broken finger and continues to fight. Since cosins in 2015, no player in the King’s team has been selected as an All-Star. Cosins is even the king’s only All-Star since 2004. All these embarrassing records may end this season.
Brown is trying to change the King’s team culture through what he has been doing-winning. The King won seven consecutive victories in last November, which was their longest winning streak in nearly 20 years. As the season was almost half finished, the King’s record also came to 19 wins and 16 losses, only 4.5 wins from the first in the West, but from the 11th in the West (that is, outside the playoff play interval) there are only four wins.
Coach Brown can win no matter which team he goes to, although he has never won due praise for it.
The total success rate of Brown’s coaching career is, ranking 9th among all coaches who have taught at least 500 games, which is a very excellent level.
(From left to right in the table above, the head coach, coaching record, and coaching success rate)
“When you look at this list, you have to realize that the number of coaching sessions here is over 500, and it is definitely an honor to win the top 10, it is a great honor for my name to appear here.” Coach Brown said.
Brown has worked with some of the best players in basketball history: James, Kobe, Duncan, Tony Parker and Ginobili.
In fact, even though coach Brown won the ninth place among many great coaches, it took him 9 years to officially become a coach, which was shocking.
“The outside world has different views on me.” Coach Brown said.
Brown has never refused any interview. He hopes to keep a keen mind and let his name have a certain degree of attention in the coaching circle.
Coach Brown went to the Wizards, Knicks, Pacers and Clippers for job interviews. After that, the position of the king’s head coach was vacant, and he was immediately attracted.
There is only one team in the city where the king is located, which has a fanatical fan base. The King’s home gold one center may be the top stadium in the league. The house price in California is relatively cheap. The King’s home court is only 45 minutes away from Napa (Sabonis bought houses in Napa and Granite Bay) and 90 minutes away from Lake Tahoe, about 2 hours from Yosemite.
Most importantly, the king has a group of 22-26-year-old core players who are ready for the game and eager to win.
The king has been silent for too long, and it needs a coach who can immediately change the reputation of the team. Coach Brown has always been the first choice of the King’s management. One of the advantages of the King’s recruitment of Brown is that Brown can fully decide what he thinks is right.
Coach Brown said: “This may be the first time I have this opportunity to do what I think is necessary during the coaching process to make the team move in the right direction. There won’t be too much resistance in the process. The King is looking for people who can guide them in their direction, and I am also looking for an opportunity to prove my ability.”
Coach Brown has brought some surprises in his own way. As the head coach of the Nigeria national team, Brown led the team to beat the US team and Argentina team in the performance before the Tokyo Olympics. Although the Nigeria team did not win the medal in the end and was eliminated during the group match, the two matches against the International strong team, even if only the performance match, also attracted the attention of the whole basketball community.
Brown’s painful ending in the Lakers and the Cavaliers is undoubtedly one of the reasons why he has long been unable to work as a coach, especially in the experience of the Cavaliers.
Under Brown’s coaching, the Knight won 272 games in five years. He also led the knight to the NBA Finals in 2007, he was elected as the best coach in 2019 after the Knight won 66 wins and broke the young pioneer team history record, but he never won the championship.
The knight was swept by Spurs in the 2007 finals. Brown’s opponent was his other mentor-Popovich baby. In the Eastern finals of 2009, the knight was beaten to magic. A year later, the Celtics eliminated the Knight early in the eastern semi-final, and James left the Knight later.
Coach Brown’s coaching philosophy has been ahead of his time for several years. He used to be criticized for his plain offensive style, but his blocking and dismantling tactics emphasized three-point projection, can be well integrated into today’s NBA. Coach Brown is also one of the first coaches to choose unlimited relieve a garrison for block removal, which depends on the staffing on the field. Only at that time, James could not wait for another famous star to partner with him, which led the Cavaliers to lose their halves in the playoffs every year.
Coach Brown said: “Popovich baby once said one thing, you need three All-Stars at peak to win the championship. Think about the team I have coached, and there have never been three all-stars during the peak period.”
Even the two All-Star stars during the peak period have not been seen.
After James won the championship successfully in the heat, Coach Brown checked the number of All-Star entries of the Heat team and compared the knights he coached at the beginning. It was found that the Heat team was selected as an all-star more than 50 times, while the knight was less than 10 times.
After James left in 2010, the knight completely tore down the whole team. Coach Brown was fired, and the general manager Danny Ferry left the team after the contract expired. The whole team completed the transition under the leadership of the new general manager Chris Grant.
At that time, the Knight’s plan was to lay down directly and accumulate the right to choose high rank and a large amount of trading assets. After winning Owen with the first prize in 2011, the Cavaliers noticed a way to let James return to the team after the contract expires in 2014, as long as they ensure that the Cavaliers’ lineup list will be attractive enough at that time.
Coach Brown was also part of the plan. Chris Grant (general manager of Knight), who was in college in MEET U, brought him back to Knight in 2013.
Brown had a good relationship with James during his work, and there was still a chance to get better. Brown came to Knight for the first time at the age of 35, the second youngest coach of the league. At that time, he was the same as when he was the video coordinator of the Nuggets at the age of 22. He was very concerned about the views of the outside world on him. Brown would go to the bar when working in the Nuggets, but he would leave quietly as long as he saw the Nuggets players coming in, because Brown was afraid of their views.
“If I go crazy with them on Friday night, how can they respect me again on Saturday morning?”
Ten years later, this situation reappeared. Coach Brown hopes that he will be more like a big brother to James than someone who wants to be in charge.
“I will have dinner with James, chat with him and recall the past, and go out for a drink together. For me, these are all part of the work, and the best teams are often those who know how to integrate work and life.” Brown said.
That Knight team is very young and will do some stupid things after losing suspense in the game. The players would dance on the bench to kill time. Brown also had many sharp criticisms because he didn’t manage the team well. He kept these criticisms in mind.
Brown said: “I was also very young at that time, and I was still fighting with my heart. As a 35-year-old and 36-year-old coach, I hope I can be more confident and stick to being myself. I want to do things the way I want, and my relationship with James. You can call us best friends if you like. I don’t care. But in fact, there is a part of my heart that wants to be the head coach, do you know? I want to be that kind of person in charge. In fact, I did not cultivate a good relationship with James as I hoped. In my opinion, the relationship between us is very good, but maybe it can be better.”
In the year before Brown returned to the Knight, the team only won 24 games. As James was about to become a free agent, Brown was asked by the management to bring the Cavaliers into the playoffs, which was an unrealistic requirement.
Brown tried to win under the difficult coexistence of 21-year-old Owen and 22-year-old Vitesse, trying to revive Bynum’s career, but Bynum was abandoned before half of the season was finished. The mid-season Knight trading Luer Deng helped, but it was far from enough to make the playoffs.
In the first year after Brown’s return, the Cavaliers won only 33 games, but they ranked 10th in the East with only 5 victories in the playoffs. In spite of this, coach Brown did his duty: he greatly improved the team’s defense and won 9 more games compared with Byron Scott’s coaching last season.
“If you pay attention to every statistic and count from the victory to all other data, you can find that we have made progress. Just as for the lineup at that time, no one could look me in the eyes. Honestly speaking, this is a playoff-level team. Our lineup at that time was too young.” Brown said.
After the Cavaliers suffered a very embarrassing defeat against the Lakers at home in February, general manager Grant was fired, and coach Brown was also fired after the season ended.
At least coach Brown earned money this time, and he could get about 23 million dollars in a season, so he was not in a hurry to go back to work.
Brown was going through divorce formalities at that time, and two teenage sons were preparing for college. So Brown left NBA and stayed in Cleveland for a year. He chose to accompany his children during the most difficult period of his personal life. Two months after being fired by the Knight, James returned to Cleveland, while Brown still lived in his home in the suburb of Westlake. He could have been the champion coach who won the championship in 2016.
On the contrary, Brown went to warrior to become coach Cole’s chief assistant.
Just two days after brown was fired by the knight, cole was appointed as the new coach of the warriors. Cole called brown at that time and asked him to be his chief assistant, but brown refused and said he was not ready yet.
After spending a year with his children, Brown called Popovich baby to see if there were any job opportunities. As we all know, Popovich baby takes care of his students very much. Brown is definitely one. Popovich baby invited Brown to be a team consultant. Time can be arranged freely and you can leave at any time if you have anything. You can get a daily subsidy when you go out with the team and stay in the team if time permits.
Feli, another MEET U in Brown, has a residence in San Antonio. Brown lived in Philip’s house Spurs and slept in his son’s old bedroom at night.
Brown joked, “Every night when you sleep, you can see a spider-man looking down at me with your eyes open.”
Brown has been running around the United States all season. After a few days in San Antonio, it may be an away trip, and then he will go to New Mexico to visit his son Elias, then go around Cincinnati to visit another son Cameron. As long as Brown stays in the Spurs, Popovich baby will use him as a full-time teaching assistant, participating in every team training and meeting, and will also appear in the team dressing room before and after the match. This is exactly what Brown needs, a feeling of returning to the alliance, which also makes him realize how much he misses this feeling.
One day after the end of the season, Popovich baby called Brown.
“Hey, Brown, Cole will call you later and offer you a job. This time you will want to accept it.” Popovich baby said. Before Brown could answer, Popovich baby on the other end of the phone hung up directly.
Brown is a typical Type A personality, and every minute of training will be planned in advance. If the players do something wrong, do it again, no matter how long it takes. Knight players used to complain about the length and intensity of some training and shooting exercises. As we all know, Knight’s in-team training sometimes is not satisfied with some things because of Brown, as a result, the training is extended for an hour or even longer.
Cole is just the opposite. Brown was a teaching assistant in the coach team of Mark Fu in the Pan American Games in 2015. He said that Mark Fu and Cole were the two coaches with the most relaxed coaching atmosphere he had ever worked, mark Fu even prepared Brown to adapt to Cole’s coaching style. However, Brown did not make any preparations for this. Warriors have two training venues. After watching the game video, the players will do some stretching on the far away stadium. Whenever coaches go towards the players, Cole will ask Brown, “So, what training do you want to arrange today?”
When Brown first came to the warrior, his overly enthusiastic nature surprised many warrior veterans. One day coach Brown used up all his energy in training and shouted loudly. As a result, igodala and Livingston pulled him aside to calm down. Before Brown came to the Warriors, Cole had been the head coach here for two years, and the Warriors had long been accustomed to the existing team culture.
“Brown, Brown, Brown, you need to relax.” Igodala and Livingston said to Brown, “Look, we don’t need that kind of thing here. We all know that you are strong, but we don’t need that kind of energy, we can handle it well.”
So Coach Brown began his transformation process. He would pay attention to Cole’s speech and the way he communicated with the players. Brown thought this was one of his weaknesses. He put a stack of paper and a pen in his pocket. Whenever Cole made a speech to the whole team, he would take notes. As for Cole’s body language and tone, these are things that Brown has never noticed before.
Although Brown is very intelligent in basketball, sometimes it is difficult to establish contact with the Cavaliers and Lakers. Now he has relaxed and will not try to solve all the team’s problems in a morning’s shooting training.
Brown said: “As a young coach, unless you successfully complete the whole training plan, you will always feel less. Even if you finish all the plans, you will feel that this is what the team should do and think that the team has taken a step forward as a whole. This is not the case. Players often don’t need to go through that. All this is to make yourself more comfortable, not for their own good. We still have training plans, but we can better sense the needs of the team. If we need to shorten the training time, I will do it without hesitation, which I am impossible before. As long as I can understand the team and feel the pulse of the team better, this is a valuable learning experience for me. I think I have done quite well now, not as before.”
Another thing is that Brown likes Zanas-ilgoskas, who was once the player with the most appearances in the Cavaliers young pioneer team history. Given that the foot surgery he received in 1999 almost destroyed his career, it was a great achievement to be able to create a field record. The problem was that coach Brown didn’t let him play directly on the night irgoscass was supposed to set a new record for young pioneer team history appearances. At that time, irgoscass was the substitute of the team. Brown didn’t let him play in the whole first half, which hurt irgoscass and didn’t get the chance to play directly after the match.
“What I TM thought at that time was to win, what the hell, just a game. At that time, who TM cared whether we won or not? On the contrary, all I think about is that I want to win, I want to win, I want to win…… This is what I do with the money. In fact, this is wrong.” Brown said.
People around Brown also noticed his changes. Jody Fernández was a young coach in the team during Brown’s coaching of Knights. Now Fernández is also Brown’s assistant coach, who is in charge of the team’s defensive rotation. Jay Triano is in charge of the King’s attack. Brown always gives the coaches in the team a lot of trust and responsibilities, and the King is no exception.
Fernandes said: “Brown can be himself more freely now. When he was young, he achieved great success in Knight. It is important for him to plan things every day, and it is also important to control everything, because it can bring him a sense of security. Now he often says that we may not be able to control this situation, but we can try our best to build these relationships. Things will not be perfect. We can always find a way to compete.”
Coach Brown began to transform the culture here almost as soon as he came to the King. A video during the training camp went viral on the Internet, and Brown was criticizing a player for not running hard enough during training. One segment is that the whole team is running. The most important player besides the player holding the ball is the one at the opposite bottom corner. Brown doesn’t like the player’s efforts to run the position, so he starts to show it in person, how to sprint and run.
“This is very interesting, because Coach Brown does not run every day, so this scene looks funny.” Fox said.
Coach Brown was expelled from the field last month in a match against the Raptors. He also showed the same passion.
Fox complained to the referee that Brent Haskill (one of the young non-staff referees in the league) gave Fox a technical foul because his teammates were dissatisfied with the penalty for a foul in Van frit. Coach Brown, who was excited, rushed directly into the field to spray the referee with anger. As a result, the senior referee, Zach Zarba, played two technical fouls ejection in a row.
A coach in coach Brown’s team had dinner with the coach of the rival team after a match. The coach admitted that their shooting training before the match told their players that they could do some small moves in the match that night, because the opponent was the king and they would not be fouled by the referee.
“You just don’t get respect. I can’t believe that ball will blow us into foul.” Brown said.
Coach Brown has no objection to Fox’s saying that he likes to read things on the court, but Fox’s words are not aggressive, and of course he will not be fouled by blowing technology. This was not the first time Brown rushed into the field, but this time he was in front of the referee.
“I saw this blow penalty, I expressed my protest, and then I paid the price for it.” Brown said.
Coach Brown was fined 25000 dollars by the league for this. If this could change the outside world’s view of the king, he would be happy to pay for it.
“I don’t care what others say about me, I don’t care what others say about my team. I want to train this team, and I think I need to do it.” Coach Brown said.
There will be no more Kenny G Jazz in Mike Brown’s car. From now on, there will only be Rev Run rap music.
Original: Jason Lloyd
Compile: Li Taibai
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Character history