All these years later, Bill Willoughby still turned the sound off when Hubie Brown broadcast a basketball game on television. Just listening to his voice left him with a visceral rage inside his Hackensack high rise, as disdainful of his old coach as Brown used to be of him in 1978. They were the worst possible concoction, a course set for catastrophe: an old-school screamer demanding defense and a shy, lost teenager out of Englewood High School. Willoughby has a scorched earth policy about his time with the Atlanta Hawks in the late 1970's, remembering the new coach of the Memphis Grizzlies the way too much of basketball does: A dinosaur past his time, a drill sergeant for a sport where today's players are reluctant to enlist.
When it comes to Brown, everyone is fast to forget the ABA championship with the Kentucky Colonels, the overachieving Atlanta teams, and initially, those tough, relentless Knicks who were winners until Bernard King blew out his knee. People always remember the end for a coach, and the end for Brown was the worst of times at Madison Square Garden in 1987, when the silence of empty seats just seemed to amplify his bombast and bluster for the ages.
Fifteen years between NBA jobs, Hubie Brown goes back to the gymnasium to serve as the subject of a fascinating coaching sociological study: What happens when you ship a coaching anachronism to the time machine -- leaving basketball with its tight shorts, his predominance of four- year college players, and controlled salaries -- for the future, dropping him back into the job at 69 years old with a bunch of clueless, but talented 0-8 kids? "Our players are going to be in for a shock," Memphis emperor Jerry West said Tuesday at the news conference.
And so too is the coach, if he hadn't used his television time to mellow his Doberman act. Brown is one of the most underrated coaches of his generation, but there was no exaggerating the mouth that relentlessly roared across the 1970's and Eighties. Brown was merciless and biting even for a generation of players raised on his ilk, but few of today' s young players have ever been coached by the Great Santini.
"Put it this way: The whole thing is to get better, right? Then Memphis is going to be better than they were because Hubie will demand it, " said an NBA official, who worked with Brown during his Knicks days. "Fifteen years is a long time. I can't see him getting in people's faces like he used to, completely tearing into people. That doesn' t work anymore.
"But they will play defense. All his teams did that. He's perfect for this job. Memphis needs him a lot."
West sounds like he thinks the Grizzlies are immature and soft, and it's clear he didn't hire Brown because he wanted a kind, gentle voice there. And truthfully, this is the greatest credibility Brown could ever have within a franchise: He's Jerry West's man now. And yet, whatever mellowing that may have occurred these past 15 years, rest assured that Brown will still be so loud with the Memphis Grizzlies, they'll think John Calipari is whispering to the Memphis Tigers.
For all the angling Memphis insiders believed Calipari had done with ownership pre-Jerry West, it's ironic: The Grizzlies hired a coach held up as Exhibit A of why Calipari's style was doomed for failure in the NBA.
The difference was, Brown was a pupil of the pro game. And he wasn' t nearly as self-destructive as Calipari. He had a hard climb to his 10 years coaching the Hawks and Knicks, starting at Fair Lawn High School in 1964. Along the way, Brown earned reverence as one of the game's best tacticians. He's a coach's coach. Most adore him. Rick Pitino is his most devoted disciple and it's no coincidence that Tuesday, West called Brown "the consummate teacher."
Before Latrell Sprewell ever wrapped his hands around P.J. Carlesimo' s throat, the old Knicks feared Darrell Walker would've done it to Brown. They had a relationship beyond volatile, where every screaming spat used to leave observers fearing that a fistfight was one Brown four-letter word away.
Finally, once, Walker refused to practice. There was something else, too: He refused to leave the court. As the story goes, the Knicks conducted drills around Walker, who simply stood and screamed at Brown.
And now, on the day Bob Knight filed suit for wrongful termination suit against Indiana University, Walker had come and gone twice as an NBA coach and Hubie Brown was back in business.
As much as anything now, NBA coaching is a profession of temperament and tact these days. He was a great teacher and a terrific coach and it ought to translate through that time machine that he traveled out of 1987. The core of the game's truths are timeless: Defense still wins and ballplayers still respond to structure and discipline.
All these years later, Brown should give his final candidacy a fighting chance and turn down the volume. Maybe this way, when Bill Willoughby sees his old coach's face this winter, Hubie Brown can give him a reason to turn his television's volume back up.
(TABLE, PAGE s05)
HUBIE BROWN'S COACHING RECORD
NBA
REGULAR SEASON
Year Team Record Pct.
1976-77 Atlanta 31-51 .378
1977-78 Atlanta 41-41 .500
1978-79 Atlanta 46-36 .561
1979-80 Atlanta 50-32 .610
1980-81 Atlanta 31-48 .391
1982-83 KNICKS 44-38 .537
1983-84 KNICKS 47-35 .573
1984-85 KNICKS 24-58 .293
1985-86 KNICKS 23-59 .280
1986-87 KNICKS 4-12 .250
TOTALS 341-410 .454
PLAYOFFS
Year Team Record Pct.
1977-78 Atlanta 0-2 .000
1978-79 Atlanta 5-4 .556
1979-80 Atlanta 1-4 .200
1982-83 KNICKS 2-4 .333
1983-84 KNICKS 6-6 .500
TOTALS 14-20 .412
ABA
regular season
Year Team Record Pct.
1974-75 Kentucky 58-26 .690
1975-76 Kentucky 46-38 .548
TOTALS 104-64 .619
PLAYOFFS
Year Team Record Pct.
1974-75 x-Kentucky 12-3 .800
1975-76 Kentucky 5-5 .500
TOTALS 17-8 .680
x-Won ABA championship
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