Larry Brown, a Tom Thibodeau fan, is looking forward to Knicks-Pacers series
Larry Brown, inset, and Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau. Credit: David L. Pokress; Newsday / J. Conrad Williams Jr.
Do you have to win an NBA title to be considered a great basketball coach?
Larry Brown, the only coach to have won both an NCAA championship and an NBA title, does not think so.
Brown was more than 30 years into his Hall of Fame coaching career before winning it all with the Detroit Pistons in 2004, 16 years after winning the NCAA title with Kansas. So he isn’t buying the notion that Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau — who has never taken a team past the conference finals — has something to prove as his Knicks open the Eastern Conference finals against the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday.
“Tom’s a great coach. A lot of people that are doing this are really good coaches that haven’t won it all,” Brown told me Sunday when I called to get his view on a series between two teams he once coached. “When you have the better team, you are generally capable of winning. He has a team that is capable of winning.”
That’s right, Brown thinks the Knicks are capable of winning it all. But he also thinks the same thing about the Pacers.
Brown, who grew up a Knicks fan in Long Beach and will turn 85 in September, was the coach of the Pacers teams that battled with the Knicks in the 1990s. He predicts that this year's series will be great for the league and believes the contrasting styles of Thibodeau and Pacers coach Rick Carlisle will make for some great basketball.
Carlisle, who is seeking his second NBA title to go with the one he earned with Dallas in 2011, is the architect of the Pacers' high-octane offense. They utilize a deep bench with a 10- to 11-man rotation designed to keep players fresh and energized when they are on the court. No one on the team is averaging more than Tyrese Haliburton’s 34.1 minutes per game in the postseason.
Thibodeau, by contrast, has extracted heavy minutes from his starters all season. Every Knicks starter is averaging more than Haliburton’s 34.1 in the postseason. Three players — Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges and OG Anunoby — are averaging at least 39 minutes, and there are nights when Thibodeau has shrunk his rotation to eight, sometimes even seven players.
Though Thibodeau for years has been criticized for running his players into the ground, the Knicks are relatively healthy heading into the series. Brown said there are distinct advantages from having played your best players heavy minutes.
“People are always saying Tom wears his players out, but your best players want to be on the court,” Brown said. “When I coached Allen Iverson, he averaged well over 40 minutes a game and he was mad every time I took him out.
“The great players I’ve been around don’t want to be sitting on the bench. He’s had kids that have played a lot of minutes during the year and now they are in the finals of the Eastern Conference and healthy right now. That’s a real positive for them.”
Brown, who coached the Knicks in 2005-06, was the coach of the Pacers when they had some of the biggest battles with the Knicks. He was there for John Starks’ head butt and Reggie Miller’s choke sign. He was there when Patrick Ewing’s putback dunk in 1994 sent the Knicks to the finals for the first time in 21 years.
Now Brown is thrilled to see that rivalry being renewed and for the Knicks to be four wins away from giving Thibodeau his first trip to the NBA Finals and the Knicks' first trip to the NBA Finals since 1999. Brown said that with the success of other sports in the area, people forget that “New York is really a basketball town,” a fact that was made pretty clear by the celebration in the streets after the Knicks knocked off the Celtics in six.
Now he’s looking forward to a great series between two great coaches.
“What I like is both teams are healthy right now and in the finals of the Eastern Conference,” Brown said. “That’s a real positive for me. I think both can win it. I hope they don’t define how a coach does based on the championships. You should be judged on if you get the most out of the talent you’ve been given.
“They’ve both done an amazing job.”
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
