Hubie Brown has a hint for all of you stuffing your faces with turkey and concerned about how to deal with retirement at the age of 65.
Don't do it.
If you love what you're doing, things just start getting interesting at 70.
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| Mike Miller says, 'He's just so organized and understands the game so much more than anybody I've seen.'(AP) |
But a little success can go a long away toward shortening that season and enhancing the energy level. That's what we're seeing from Brown, the irrepressible coach of the Memphis Grizzlies, who took over a reeling 0-8 team last year and is rapidly becoming one of the great success stories of this season with a very solid 6-7 start in the tough Midwest Division.
Sixteen years after Brown was fired as coach of the Knicks, people thought Grizzlies president Jerry West was nuts for hiring the professorial television analyst. But as it turned out, his knowledge of the players -- particularly the younger ones with his television draft knowledge and coaching clinics in Europe -- were a perfect fit for a young team.
And regarding his well-documented confrontational style during his 12 years as a pro coach, well, that was a generation ago.
"I was trying to put two and two together," said Wesley Person, the oldest player on the roster, a few weeks older than forward Bo Outlaw. "Everybody said he was the tough guy, really getting into your face about things. Obviously, he's settled down. Instead, what I'm seeing is a guy who really wants the young guys to understand the game. He's a teacher trying to make the game easier for us."
He won a championship as coach of the 1975 Kentucky Colonels in the ABA, and lost in the conference semifinals in 1976 before the league folded. Then he was hired as coach of the Atlanta Hawks, was named coach of the year in 1978 and had mixed success with the Knicks before becoming a television analyst.
Surprisingly, that has translated well to a franchise that has never won 30 games and never won more than 23 until he led them to a 28-46 finish. More importantly, his age is not a factor because the players are so intrigued by the possibilities -- even their moderate success this season feeds into it. A full training camp has made a huge difference after Brown picked up the pieces after the nightmarish Sidney Lowe regime
"We know what we're doing a lot more this year compared to last year," said forward Shane Battier, the former NCAA player of the year from Duke. "We've been able to implement the full philosophy as opposed to just half of it. He's a basketball man. That's what he does. It's his passion. We're his passion. That's why age is not a factor here. I'm very fortunate, between him and Coach K (Mike Krzyzewski), I've had just about two of the best teachers of the game you can possibly have in basketball today."
Because he has not coached in the NBA for so long, the inclination would be to assume the game and the nature of the players have changed so much it would be difficult for Brown to re-acclimate his style and personality to the game.
Instead, it has been a non-factor.
"Well, one thing that's different is I had playoff teams," Brown said. "That was a major factor for me. (Today's) players are more athletic. The players are bigger, stronger and quicker because of all the extra training they do today. The game is not played at rim level it's played about a foot above the box. That's 11 feet. We are more athletic and when I came in in 1973, you didn't have many guys who were 7-feet tall, now you've got about 70 guys over 7-feet. Guards in the backcourt, if you had a 6-4, 6-5 guard, that was rare.
"Everything has changed, guys who were power forwards are small forwards and some are big guards. That has changed tremendously, and so has preparation because of technology. There is much better preparation for all 82 games.
"But one thing still holds true, the good players want to be coached."
Maybe his good players do. Ask around the league, and you will get plenty of horror stories of lackadaisical attitudes and a sense of entitlement from young players who haven't earned playing time but are already millionaires.
Then again, he unloaded 2002 top pick Drew Gooden in a hurry to Orlando in a deal that brought Mike Miller in February. That has worked fine and Miller, although somewhat injury-prone, is thrilled to be a part of what's going on in Memphis.
"He's just so organized and understands the game so much more than anybody I've seen, it makes him a great leader for a young team," Miller said. "Anytime you find a guy who knows the game, explains the game and has a passion for the game the way he does, makes it exciting for the players."
He runs practices in the same manner he always did, and continues to play 10 guys every game because they're all so talented. Plus, you never know when a late bloomer might suddenly become a star.
Everything is prepared the night before when he meets with his assistants. There is no wasted time or motion. The players have learned how to attack zone defenses and how to disrupt the tempo by quickly slipping into a variety of zones of their own.
The big difference this year has been defense, as the Grizzlies are climbing the ladder in forced turnovers and defensive field goal percentage. The shooters -- Miller and Person -- have struggled out of the blocks, but the defense has kept them in games despite woeful defensive rebounding.
The goal this season was to improve on the road, particularly against Western Conference teams. They won only two games on the road in the West last season and have already won at Houston and Seattle this year. Plus they have beaten three of the West's top teams -- the Lakers, Mavericks and Spurs -- at home.
The progress is obvious, which is all you can hope for with a young team. West had lobbied to move to the NBA Lite, uh, Eastern Conference, when the expansion Charlotte Bobcats came into the league. But Brown knew better than to count on anything of the sort and he was right. In the realignment, the Grizzlies are headed to a new division with the San Antonio, Houston, Dallas and New Orleans (moving from East to West) -- clearly four playoff teams.
"It wasn't even close," Brown said. "They added an expansion team to the East and a playoff team to the West. You know what, when you're in professional sports, you can't waste time on things like that. You are who you are and where you are. So this is your job and this is where you play. You can talk all you want, but it's not going to change the fact that you've got to play them all four times."
This sort of lucid thinking is why his players know it isn't cliché when he says they will play one game at a time and those who are playing well on a given night will stay in the game. From young star Pau Gasol to recently activated rookie Dahntay Jones, if you are productive, you play. If not, you sit. There is no gray area.
And it works. If ever there was a player who epitomizes the impact Brown can make, it's Jason Williams, the enigmatic former lottery pick of the Kings who built his reputation quickly as one of the most exciting young point guards in the league.
The problem was, after turning on the team and the crowd with a brilliant no-look pass between his legs to Chris Webber, he was just as likely to throw up a 30-foot airball or fire a pass 20 rows into the seats.
With Williams having just turned 28, Brown has settled him down. In their three-game winning streak over the Lakers, Mavericks and Orlando, Williams had 30 assists and just four turnovers. In their win at Seattle, he had 24 of his 28 points in the second half -- including the game-winning 3-pointer.
"I still consider myself young and I still want to have fun," Williams said. "But we want to win, so we listen to what Hubie says and understand our roles. It makes us a better team.
"The bottom line is, we have so much respect for him. The guy ... I mean, if he says (poop), we squat."
Now that's respect, particularly for a 70-year-old.
