Over the past week, as you know, two of college basketball’s greatest coaches died.
Dean Smith was 83, Jerry Tarkanian 84. Smith retired in his late 60s, and Tark made one last NCAA tournament appearance at age 70.
Coaching 19-year-olds is generally not a senior citizen’s profession. Bill Snyder is the exception that proves the rule in college football. In hoops, Lute Olson would have made a Final Four at age 70 had it not been for one of the great endgame collapses in college basketball history, Arizona’s gack attack in the 2005 Chicago Regional final against Illinois. The oldest coach to win a national title? Jim Calhoun with Connecticut in 2011, at age 68. The man he surpassed was none other than Phog Allen, who won a national title in 1952 at age 66.
This sets the scene for the Larry Brown Story, which is entering a new chapter as riveting as any that have come before it.
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Phog Allen’s old-man coaching crown at Kansas in 1952 is significant in relationship to Larry Brown for two fundamental reasons: First, it was won in part by contributions from a player named Dean Smith, who would become Brown’s coach and mentor at North Carolina. Second, that first Kansas title would not be followed by another national crown until 1988, when Brown rode “Danny Manning and The Miracles” to the winner’s circle in Kansas City.
Brown, recognized as the strongest branch in Dean Smith’s coaching tree, is not likely to remain SMU’s head coach for an extended period of time. Perhaps he has a surprise in store for all of us, but history shows that Brown doesn’t do prolonged coaching stays. He is that rare specimen in elite team-sport coaching, someone who has been historically elite while also being incurably nomadic.
The number of coaching stops in Brown’s life matches the number of colors he wore on the sidelines at games in the 1970s, in the early stages of what would become a Hall of Fame career:
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Yes, Pat Riley coached three teams in his celebrated NBA career, but he didn’t exactly jet in and out of either Los Angeles or Miami. (New York? Different story.)
True, Eddie Sutton reached Final Fours 26 years apart at different schools, and he took four schools to the NCAA tournament, but he put down roots at both Arkansas and Oklahoma State.
Almost all the great coaches in any sport make their name in one or two places, maybe three at the most.
Larry Brown has defied that pattern.
His longest head coaching stop in 43 years, since he debuted with the Carolina Cougars of the ABA in 1972? Six seasons, with the Philadelphia 76ers (1997-’98 through 2002-’03). He’s coached 10 professional teams, and his current stint at SMU marks his third college job. That’s 13 jobs over 43 years. Doing quick math (and realizing he didn’t coach in the 2007, 2008, or 2012 basketball seasons in the NBA or college), his average stay at any job has been roughly three seasons.
Yet, only a few men can claim a body of achievement richer than what Brown has established over time.
The Krzyzewskis and Woodens and Dean Smiths; the Auerbachs, Jacksons, Rileys, and Popoviches — these are the best coaches in basketball history. (Popovich, it should be said, is Brown’s greatest pupil, a legitimate member of Brown’s own coaching tree. John Calipari also counts, having been a Brown assistant at Kansas.)
Brown doesn’t quite match those giants — partly because he didn’t allow himself to stick around at a few places and chase history, partly because his restless self took on fixer-upper jobs instead of the glamor jobs Dean Smith and Phil Jackson turned into shining legacies. However, if Brown is ever so slightly behind those legends in the hierarchy of all-time greats, he’s ahead of just about everyone else. His accomplishments speak for themselves.
At age 74, then, normal coaches would be winding down the clock, perhaps enjoying a lot more rounds of golf or hitting the speaking circuit, maybe running a bunch of basketball camps at most. Brown’s proved all that a basketball coach can prove. Shouldn’t he call it a career?
Remember: This man does not fit normal patterns.
Brown remains addicted to coaching — not to any one team, of course, but to the gym, and practice, and playing the right way. Despite losing prize recruit Emmanuel Mudiay to eligibility concerns, and despite losing half-seasons to both Markus Kennedy (first semester) and Keith Frazier (second), Brown has SMU in first place in The American and in decent shape to make the NCAA tournament. (The Mustangs aren’t a lock, though; they seemed to be comfortably in the field at this point last season, only to lose three straight games and watch a number of surprise auto-bid winners plus North Carolina State bump them out of the group of 68.)
If Brown makes the NCAAs a month from now, he’ll lead his third school to the Big Dance. At 74, he’ll also become one of the oldest coaches to make the NCAA tournament. Patrick Stevens, the excellent college sports writer-analyst-bracketologist for Syracuse.com, put together this detailed profile of NCAA tournament coaches in their 70s. None on this (unavoidably incomplete) list were as old as 74 when they returned to the Dance floor. Brown would be doing something rare and special if he makes the tournament.
Rare and special — that describes both Brown and his career in a nutshell.
It’s therefore worth expressing that even at his advanced age, Brown has made himself relevant in ways his contemporaries haven’t managed to do. Paradoxically, his nomadic tendencies have served him well here. If he was a lifer at one program the way Dean Smith was, his story might still be as luminous, but it wouldn’t be as fresh as it is at SMU.
ESPN College GameDay isn’t going to North Carolina… or Kansas… or Syracuse this weekend, one month before Selection Sunday. It’s going to SMU for the Mustangs’ game against defending national champion Connecticut. One week after Dean Smith’s death, you can bet that this GameDay broadcast will feature Brown talking about his beloved teacher at UNC. Brown will be reminiscing, but he’s still a present-tense participant in the sport, on the verge of achieving something profound… again. It was quite understandable to view SMU’s hire of Brown as a desperate, publicity-seeking move… but it has turned out better than many were expecting. Brown is still relevant, and from that vantage point, it would seem that his success at SMU is a validation of Dean Smith’s methods.
However, in light of the death of Jerry Tarkanian just a few days after Smith’s passing, it has become impossible to ignore how Brown’s coaching career — though forged with on-court principles taught to him by Smith — has imitated Tarkanian’s path off the court.
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It is common knowledge in the college basketball industry: The trade-off involved in bringing Larry Brown to a college campus is that while you might reach the national title game (as he did at both Kansas and UCLA), you will probably get in trouble with the NCAA. Brown and the NCAA have consistently been at odds over the years, and they’re still at odds now. Sure enough, SMU is in hot water with the organization over questions regarding altered grades and, more specifically, the actions of now-former SMU and Brown assistant coach Ulric Maligi. The NCAA’s investigation continues while SMU tries to track down a tournament ticket this season.
If the NCAA winds up punishing SMU severely, Brown could quickly lose what appetite he still has for coaching, and his coach-in-waiting, Tim Jankovich (a Bill Self assistant at Kansas before he became the head coach at Illinois State), will take over the Mustangs. Brown’s career could finally arrive at an end, unless an NBA team would want “L.B.” to perform one more Mr. Fix It act… which is unlikely.
Yet, that point hasn’t arrived yet, and with Memphis floundering under Josh Pastner while Ryan Boatright concludes his career at Connecticut, SMU certainly has a good chance to contend next season in The American.
Larry Brown, always a convention-defying wanderer, is simultaneously a Dean Smith-style preacher of on-court basketball virtues and a Tark-like off-court troublemaker. One of this sport’s most effective teachers and one of the industry’s most uncomfortable souls is the same person… a person who remains at the center of basketball’s story for many different reasons.
