紐約沉淪記(1)--布朗伯伯與微笑老湯的陰謀

Hakkinen

Larry Brown's dream job with the New York Knicks could end after only one season.

Brown's worst seasons as NBA coach
Team         Record         Season w/team         Next season
'88-89 Spurs         21-61         First         56-26*
'05-06 Knicks         23-59         First         ?
'97-98 76ers         31-51         First         28-22*
*Made playoffs

Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan, who's upset over Brown's record and the coach's public criticism of his players, is considering buying out the final four years of the coach's contract, the New York Daily News and New York Post reported in Sunday's editions.

The buyout is worth at least $40 million, the newspaper reported.

The Knicks declined to comment.

One published report indicated Knicks president Isiah Thomas was in line to replace Brown as head coach, the newspaper said, but the team would not confirm nor deny it.

Brown, who led the Knicks to a 23-59 season, has indicated that he will not resign. But the club could avoid having to pay another coach upward of $5 million a year if Thomas takes the job, the Daily News reported. One source told the newspaper that Thomas -- who coached the Pacers from 2000-2003 -- would be amenable to coaching the Knicks.

In April, one day after the Knicks completed one of the worst seasons in franchise history, Thomas said the Hall of Fame coach would return to coach the team for a second season. The underachieving roster was another story.

"I am loyal to winning and I am not loyal to any singular individual," Thomas said then. "I'm going to do what I need to do to make our team better. ...

"When you won 23 games, I think we'll make some changes," he said. "Coach and I haven't sat down and fully decided what changes we'll make, but we'll probably make some changes." 微笑老湯


VS   VS

[ 本帖最後由 Hakkinen 於 2006-5-16  07:06 AM 編輯 ]

Hakkinen

DUMB AND DUMBER

You're probably a fan of a pro sports team. Maybe you're a fanatic. Maybe, truth be told, your team is more important to you than your mother.

Maybe nothing in life gives you greater joy and pain than your team. Maybe you've attached your very self-worth to your team's performance. When it wins, you brag to friends and coworkers as if you're superior because you chose to be a fan of this great team. When it loses, you want to go into hiding.

Owners like James Dolan are your worst nightmare. You are a prisoner of his decisions, and you probably could run his team -- your team -- better than he does.

If you're a New York Knicks fan, bless you, you're being held hostage by James Dolan. He deserved to be fired long ago, but you cannot fire him. You cannot vote him out of office. Your only way out is to quit watching Knicks games in person and on TV and hope enough of your fellow fans quit watching to drive this clown out of business. 奠

But you know that's not realistic. The Knicks are your life -- or at least a big part of it. And you can't quit watching because, well, at least Dolan pours a fair amount of his Cablevision profits back into the team. At least he has the NBA's highest payroll. At least he went out and hired the best coach available -- Brooklyn-born Larry Brown -- and paid him more money than any coach in any sport has ever made.

So even though the Knicks gave you probably the worst season in franchise history, losing 59 of 82 games, you cannot divorce them. You know they could -- should! -- turn it around at any moment.

And James Dolan knows he has you by the eyeballs. He knows he can get away with some of the most embarrassing mismanagement this side of Bill Bidwill, because you can't -- or won't -- do anything about it.

Oh, you could heckle him and boo him if you saw him at Madison Square Garden or out in public. But he's at least smart enough to avoid what made his father (and in turn him) so wealthy -- the TV cameras. You never see him. In fact, you're probably not exactly sure what the man who controls your joy looks like.

Yet this spoiled brat has turned your Knicks into such a national laughingstock that it's debatable which is worse: Los Angeles without an NFL team or New York with an NBA team.

Your Knicks are now what the Clippers used to be -- a Leno-Letterman punch line.

Now Dolan has shamed you like never before. Now, if Sunday's reports are true, he's going to fire Larry Brown after one season and replace him with your general manager, Isiah Thomas. (Or maybe with uninspiring former interim coach Herb Williams.) That's right, "Dough-lan" is so rich and so basketball-dumb that he's going to buy out the remaining $40-odd million on Brown's contract and perhaps replace him with the GM who should have been fired two years ago. With his good buddy Isiah, who was no better than a mediocre coach for three seasons in Indiana (131-115) before getting fired because he couldn't get out of the first round of the playoffs.

Sure, you can argue that Isiah created this roster disaster, so he should be sentenced to coach it.

But you don't sentence Enron executives to run Enron.

If Dolan does fire Brown, it will go down as his dumbest move yet. Larry Brown is a lot of things -- job jumper, media manipulator, con artist of superstar egos -- but he is not a bad basketball coach. He might tell an occasional fib, but his history doesn't lie. When fans least expected it -- at UCLA and Kansas, with the Clippers and Spurs and Sixers and Pistons -- he gave them bragging rights they'll never forget.

Yes, you or I could perhaps have won more games than Brown did with your Knicks this past season. But there was method to his badness. He needed to tear down all those puffed-up egos, then build them back up. He needed the Stephons and Eddys to come crawling back next year and say, "OK, we'll do it your way."

Brown's method doesn't work well with unrealistic first-year expectations. And that's what your overreacting New York media gave this prodigal son as a welcome-home gift. Playoffs, here we come!

Admit it: You bought into it.

But when much of the team predictably mutinied on Brown, he experienced a career first. Larry Brown got Larry Browned. Isiah, the GM who hired him, sold him out. Isiah didn't defend Brown to the players -- or to the owner.

Isiah managed to get just about everyone within the organization to condemn Brown for what so many outside the organization can easily see is Isiah's fault.

Isiah Thomas gave Jerome James $22 million for four years? The same James who averaged 3.0 points and 2.0 rebounds last season? GMs around the league were belly laughing over that one. 原來佢有上場架

That move alone should have cost Isiah his job.

So why didn't it? Because, trust me, Isiah can be a blast to be around. He can talk hoops as convincingly as he played them. Great smile, even better laugh. A little "street" mixed with a little Wall Street. A charmer of a hustler.

And his latest mark is a real guppy. Dolan is a wannabe rock star who can be as easily manipulated by famous people as he can be angered by underlings. The biggest "mistake" Brown made last season -- you should consider it a plus -- was avoiding kissing up to Dolan. That really ticked off the thin-skinned, tantrum-throwing owner.

Meanwhile, Isiah was constantly telling his "bro" Jimbo what was really going on. This guy is Steinbrenner without a clue.

And you can't do a thing about any of this.

Really, how can you root for anyone here? Dolan has a reputation for ruthless business practice, including feuding with his benefactor/father Charles, a cable-TV pioneer. Isiah left a trail of controversy as the owner and operator of the Continental Basketball Association.

Your lone sympathy here should be for Brown's health problems, which could have played a part in his coaching performance last season and his possible dismissal now. The New York Post reported that Brown had another bladder surgery on Friday.

But it's hard to feel that sorry for him when you realize he conceivably could be paid a total of $50 million for one terrible season's work, then wind up making another $7 or $8 million to coach a team that could contend for next season's NBA title -- the Sacramento Kings.

Wait, is it possible Brown out-hustled Isiah, intentionally sabotaging last season so Dolan would fire him and he could take his 50 mil to Sacto, where a title-caliber roster awaits?

All I know for sure is that I feel sorry for you Knicks fans. There's little hope. And no way out.

[ 本帖最後由 Hakkinen 於 2006-5-16  07:08 AM 編輯 ]

Penny仔

假如Brown真係走,微笑老湯即係令球隊唔見左40m
....如果微笑老湯咁都有得留低,仲做埋head coach的話
我真係唔知講咩好

Hakkinen

原帖由 Penny仔 於 2006-5-16  09:58 發表
假如Brown真係走,微笑老湯即係令球隊唔見左40m
....如果微笑老湯咁都有得留低,仲做埋head coach的話
我真係唔知講咩好

NYK 既球迷可以有幾年前溜馬球迷既享受

WainSeven

我寧願支持red bulls都唔支持呢隊knicks

Hakkinen

原帖由 WainSeven 於 2006-5-16  10:04 發表
我寧願支持red bulls都唔支持呢隊knicks

NYK D人真係有錢
20M 請個平均一場3分2籃板既人番黎

barthezhk

原帖由 Hakkinen 於 2006-5-16  10:11 AM 發表

NYK D人真係有錢
20M 請個平均一場3分2籃板既人番黎

唉... 又輸一場.... 番去 Auburn Hills 嬴番,, 再作客嬴番...

hehe0114

22m 4年
得閒返工練下波
球隊打波既時候做啦啦隊隊長
上下場打幾分鐘
聽下brown講野
咁又收工

Hakkinen

原帖由 hehe0114 於 2006-5-16  12:56 發表
22m 4年
得閒返工練下波
球隊打波既時候做啦啦隊隊長
上下場打幾分鐘
聽下brown講野
咁又收工

又可以睇馬貝利大戰布朗叔叔

hehe0114

原帖由 Hakkinen 於 2006-5-16  13:00 發表

又可以睇馬貝利大戰布朗叔叔

咁既工真係正

barthezhk

原帖由 hehe0114 於 2006-5-16  12:56 PM 發表
22m 4年
得閒返工練下波
球隊打波既時候做啦啦隊隊長
上下場打幾分鐘
聽下brown講野
咁又收工

我收順D... 10m 4年...

沙9

個老闆係咪o9?

Eggio

原帖由 沙9 於 2006-5-17  12:38 AM 發表
個老闆係咪o9?

你睇佢請微笑老湯就知啦
佢簡直對Isiah言聽計從

沙9

原帖由 Eggio 於 2006-5-17  12:47 AM 發表

你睇佢請微笑老湯就知啦
佢簡直對Isiah言聽計從

真係好廢...van gundy 走左之後都未好過

Hakkinen

A source has told ESPN that Larry Brown has told friends there is no question in his mind that he will be fired by the New York Knicks.

The source also said Brown has told friends that no one from the Knicks has spoken directly to him in the last three weeks. Brown had bladder surgery Friday and is recovering at his home in suburban New York.

Brown's agent, Joe Glass, said he did hear from Knicks president Isiah Thomas on Monday and Thomas told him there was no truth to reports that the Knicks wanted to buy out Brown's contract.

"I spoke to Isiah Thomas earlier this afternoon and he categorically denied that there's any substances to what was in the paper," Glass told The Associated Press on Monday.

While no formal buyout talks have begun, it's clear the Knicks have made it known to Brown that they're open to the notion of a settlement on the four years and $40 million remaining on Brown's contract. The New York Post reported Tuesday that the Knicks are hoping they can buy out Brown for $25 million.

Brown signed the deal amid much hoopla last July, taking over what he once called a "dream job" and then leading the Knicks through a nightmarish season.

League insiders told ESPN.com that the Knicks, looking at things from a practical and financial standpoint, feel they'd be best served to cut their losses with Brown rather than undergo the type of large-scale roster overhaul that would be needed to placate him. In other words, why trade Stephon Marbury for less-than-star players whose contracts will carry huge luxury taxes when they can simply buy out Brown and move on with a new coach.

That coach would almost certainly be Thomas, who assembled the roster that Brown found so difficult to coach. Thomas and Marbury have been close throughout their two-plus years together in New York, and there's a school of thought that if anybody is able to get through to Marbury and turn him into a winner -- or at least a better teammate -- it might just be Thomas.

"Based on our record, that's normal for anybody to have that speculation," the Knicks' point guard told the AP of the reports that Brown may be cut loose.

As for the possibility of Thomas becoming coach, Marbury said: "I wouldn't mind, it doesn't matter who coaches. ... I don't care if Larry Brown comes back. I wouldn't mind at all."

Brown perplexed his players and eventually lost their support by constantly switching lineups and rotations, never quite settling on any set combination over the course of the entire 82-game season. His penchant for making thinly veiled criticisms of his players through the media irked his players nearly as much as it bothered the team's corporate owners at Cablevision.

Despite the players' and management's strangely rosy pronouncements on the day after the season ended, all was certainly not well inside the franchise. One of Brown's final moves that left several key people scratching their heads was his use (or non-use) of Steve Francis and Jalen Rose after they were acquired at midseason.

Knicks brass clearly realized something needed to be done. And in a culture where Cablevision typically writes a severance check to make its problems go away, the easiest solution in this case seems to be buying out Brown.

"I'm not going to comment on Larry's feelings through all this, and there really isn't anything else to say," said Glass, who negotiated Brown's $7 million buyout with the Pistons last July after Detroit owner Bill Davidson also came to the realization that he'd be better off with a different coach. The divorce of the Pistons and Brown turned into a bitter breakup, and this one appears to be heading that way, too.

The likely next step in the process would be a meeting between Brown and Knicks owner Jim Dolan, although Brown has reportedly asked for one and was turned down.

And with Glass saying no buyout talks have been discussed as of yet, this breakup could drag on through next week when the Knicks will learn the consequences of another of their mistakes -- trading their No. 1 pick to Chicago for Eddy Curry. The Bulls will learn next Tuesday at the draft lottery, where they'll be among the mathematical favorites, where the pick formerly owned by the Knicks will fall in the draft.

DOLAN一定好開心,25m 就buyout到

李喂凸

如果老湯只負責選秀同提拔後生仔就好了

henrytam

原帖由 Penny仔 於 2006-5-16  09:58 AM 發表
假如Brown真係走,微笑老湯即係令球隊唔見左40m
....如果微笑老湯咁都有得留低,仲做埋head coach的話
我真係唔知講咩好

做左咁多交易.......d成績仲差過以前....
又照計唔係等重建......
我都唔明點解佢仲未俾人炒

射手shooter

原帖由 李喂凸 於 2006-5-17  18:14 發表
如果老湯只負責選秀同提拔後生仔就好了

佢專提拔入樽冠軍

hehe0114

睇下老湯下海又會點