With Kerr out, Warriors in hands of a tested leader
In the early 1990s, as a video coordinator for the Denver Nuggets, Mike Brown put together highlight tapes of NBA draft prospects.
The assignment was labor-intensive: Wade through video of nine games for each projected first-round pick, stopping and starting at every sequence in which the player in question did something noteworthy. Bernie Bickerstaff, then the Nuggets’ general manager, sometimes arrived at the office early in the morning to find the bleary-eyed Brown finishing an all-nighter.
It was that tireless approach that convinced Bickerstaff that Brown would be the rare video staffer to someday lead an NBA team. During a visit to the video room one day, Bickerstaff told Brown to never burn bridges because, in a league as fraternal as the NBA, saying the wrong thing
can ruin a career.
“I always keep that right at the front of my mind,” Brown, now the Warriors’ acting head coach, said after practice Friday. “There’s so much truth to it.”
In his 18th year of a coaching career that has included three firings, Brown faces one of his most daunting challenges yet: keeping the Warriors on track for an NBA title while head coach Steve Kerr takes an indefinite hiatus from in-game coaching to seek a solution to his chronic pain.
By helping the Warriors weather Kerr’s absence, Brown would put himself in the discussion for other headcoaching vacancies this summer. There is also a chance that, if Kerr was unable to return, Brown could replace him as Golden State’s head coach.
Such possibilities aren’t his concern, though.
Brown, who has been with six teams — including two stints overseeing the Cleveland Cavaliers — since getting his first assistant job, has come to realize that unpredictability is the NBA’s lone constant.
“Anything can happen,” Brown said. “If we go out and we lost Games 3 and 4 (of the first round), I don’t know if I’d be able to walk outside my house in the Bay Area. I feel like I have that in perspective because I’ve been through both sides of it.”
In June 2005, after building a reputation as a relentless worker in assistant-coaching stops with Washington (199799), San Antonio (200003) and Indiana (200305), the then-35-year-old Brown became the league’s second-youngest head coach with the Cavaliers. Only three months earlier, Cleveland had fired head coach Paul Silas after a promising start to the season gave way to a 3-9 rut.
It was Brown’s job to make sure LeBron James, a 20-year-old All-Star at the time, stopped watching the playoffs from home. Thanks largely to the aggressive defense Brown implemented, a Cavaliers team of James and spare parts reached the NBA Finals in Brown’s second season. Two years later, after guiding Cleveland to a franchise-record 66 victories, Brown was named NBA Coach of the Year.
In the wake of a seven-season playoff drought, the Cavaliers won two-thirds of their games and never did worse than appearing in the Eastern Conference semifinals under Brown. The expectations heightened. Unable to lead Cleveland to an NBA title, Brown was fired in May 2010, two months before James signed with Miami in free agency.
A year later, after a stint coaching his youn-
gest son’s middle school football team, Brown was hired by the Lakers to follow the legendary Phil Jackson. During the lockout-shortened 201112 season, Brown shepherded the Lakers to a Pacific Division title and a berth in the Western Conference semifinals. But in November 2012, after the Lakers stumbled to a 1-4 start despite the league’s largest payroll, he was unemployed again.
Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert rehired Brown before the 2013-14 season, admitting during the introductory news conference that he regretted dismissing Brown three years earlier. A young Cleveland team made defensive strides and improved its record by nine wins. But when it missed the playoffs for a fourth consecutive year, Gilbert fired Brown again.
After two years away from coaching, Brown, still nursing the injuries of a recent house fire, hobbled on crutches into the lobby of a hotel in downtown Cleveland last June to interview to be Kerr’s lead assistant. It was during that discussion that Kerr, whose Warriors were between Games 3 and 4 of the NBA Finals, asked Brown if he’d be comfortable potentially serving as Golden State’s acting head coach if necessary.
Last weekend, when Kerr was too ill to coach Game 3 of the first round against Portland, Brown led the Warriors to a come-from-behind victory. Now, as he readies Golden State for the second round, Brown is trying to maintain the status quo.
“To his credit, he’s kept the culture and the way we do things the same,” assistant coach Bruce Fraser said. “I think it’d be really easy for him to come in and try to do things differently, but he recognizes that what we’ve been doing has worked for us. He’s a true pro.”
Brown opened his post-practice session with the media Wednesday by expressing support for Ethan Strauss, a longtime Warriors beat writer who was one of the 100-plus employees laid off by ESPN. It was a reminder for Brown that, regardless of how well things are going, he can never predict when he might be out of employment.
“This is obviously an exciting time for us, not only as an organization, but as a city, there’s a lot of good vibes going on,” Brown told reporters. “But (layoffs are) the reality of the world today. So we’re thinking of (Strauss) and everybody else that goes through that, not only in sports, but also in life.”