Well, that felt fairly anticlimactic. Mike Brown, who’s been the coach of the Cavaliers for the majority of the LeBron era, won the coach of the year award last season, has one of the best winning percentages among active coaches, and is the only man to have ever coached LeBron James in a playoff game, was fired on Sunday night. When it happened, most NBA fans wondered what took the Cavaliers so darn long to do it. As unfair as that may seem, that’s today’s NBA for you. (By the way, sorry for the late response to this on my part — I spent the last 24 hours moving and away from a computer.)
Make no mistake: firing Brown was probably the right move, given the situation. The bottom line is that the Cavs have failed to meet expectations in the playoffs for two years in a row. When a team fails to meet expectations, the weight of those expectations falls on the coach. More often than not, he finds himself out of a job. After a disappointing season, someone is going to be the fall guy, and it’s a lot easier to change coaches than it is to make a major roster move. If you can’t change the product, change the packaging.
That would be true any year, but it’s never been more true than it is this summer. With so many potential franchise players choosing where they’re going to play next season, perception is everything. On some level, it doesn’t matter if Mike Brown can coach or not at this point. Lots of people think he’s a bad coach, and that is a big deal with this free agency market. Even if (if) LeBron believes in Mike Brown, do you think a guy like Chris Bosh would beg for a sign-and-trade because he wants to play for Mike Brown? Regardless of how the Cavalier brass felt about Mike Brown, they ultimately weren’t left with much choice in this situation.
And that’s a shame, because Mike Brown didn’t deserve to have it end like this. When he took the Cavaliers over, they did not play defense. Without any major roster upgrades, he turned Cleveland into one of the best defensive teams in the league. Under his watch, LeBron James improved tremendously on both ends of the floor. In the 2006, 07, and ’08 playoffs, the team outperformed expectations every year through pure grit, defense, rebounding, and hustle. (And LeBron, although his offensive production used to go way down during the playoffs.)
He did his best to make adjustments when the team made major roster moves, often bringing in players who represented potential defensive liabilities. During this year’s regular season, he constantly tweaked the lineup in the face of a slew of injuries, allowing the Cavs to get the #1 record while playing a variety of styles.
And then the Celtics came and took all of that away. The Celtics beat the Cavaliers convincingly, and then it was time for Mike Brown to go. Maybe he would’ve had a chance if the series hadn’t have been so ugly, but it was. The facts are these: the Cavs won six games this post-season, their lowest playoff win total in the last five years. The Cavs almost never got blown out in the playoffs before — over the course of six games, they were blown out twice on their home floor. After that kind of performance, change is necessary. But how much of the blame for the Celtics fiasco should honestly rest on Mike Brown’s shoulders?
Mike Brown certainly made some mistakes in that Celtics series. His offense wasn’t complex enough to create open looks against Thibodeau’s defense. The intensity was not where it needed to be. He didn’t have his rotations ready for Boston, and not having enough “small-ball” lineups ready to match Boston’s athleticism was a fatal mistake. It’s Monday morning quarterbacking, but there are things Brown probably should have done differently in that series.
All of that being said, let’s take a second to acknowledge that Mike Brown had a very tough task in front of him during that series. Look what he had to work with:
-The Cavs’ three major acquisitions (Williams/Jamison/Shaq), who had been forced into the starting lineup and were brought in to win big playoff games, were all horrible matchups for the Celtics and were often hurting the Cavs in one way or another when they were on the floor. To put it bluntly, they were $40 million worth of suck. What do you do in that situation? Remember, these are supposed to be the players Mike Brown could lean on in tough situations. Do you cut the minutes of three of the four highest-paid players on the team during the most important games of the season? Do you tweak the starting lineup? Wouldn’t those moves reek of desperation?
-A reminder: the starting center and power forward had barely played together coming into the Boston series.
-Mike Brown went into every game having no idea who the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th-best Cavalier was going to be that night.
-The Moon/Parker/West SG situation was a nightmare to figure out. Parker would hit threes, but he would get attacked on defense and was too passive offensively. Delonte made hustle plays and changed the game at times, but he couldn’t find the basket. Jamario’s length was exactly what the Cavs needed on defense, but then he’d miss a wide-open three by a couple of feet.
-J.J. Hickson started for almost the entire year and seems like the kind of athletic big the Cavs needed, but the Celtics were exploiting him on defense every time he touched the floor. Every time Hickson came in, it was like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. Should MB have trusted the 21-year old to figure it out?
-Do you bring in an ice-cold Boobie Gibson? Or how about Zydrunas Ilgauskas, who was the team’s starting center up until this year and was an afterthought player coming into the playoffs? Again, how common are radical rotation adjustments like these in the midst of a playoff series?
Plus the team was getting killed on the boards. Plus the defense wasn’t there. I’m not saying any of the above is quantum mechanics, but the front office gave Mike Brown a LOT of things to figure out in a matter of weeks, and then on a game-to-game basis. Coaching-wise, the degree of difficulty in managing that rotation was darn near off the charts. Mike Brown has always been a guy who prevents losses more than a guy who creates wins — why is everyone acting shocked and betrayed when he failed to perform the roster alchemy necessary to beat a surprise Boston team that the roster hadn’t been built for?
It was Mike Brown’s time to go. That doesn’t mean it’s time to grab the rope and a rail. For five straight years, the Cavs made the playoffs. They won 66% of their regular-season games during that time, and 59% of their playoff games. Mike Brown coached defense, and took the Cavs to the playoffs because of that defense. He never made excuses, got into it with the players or the media, and never let his ego get in the way. He had the perspective and humility to publicly cede control of the offensive schemes over to assistant coaches. He never complained about the perception that his teams were winning in spite of him. He just put on his tie, spit in a cup, and coached very good basketball teams. He never did get that title, but neither have a lot of coaches who are held in a different stratosphere of regard than Brown ever will be. Was he the best guy to manage a team with the kind of the talent the Cavs had over the last two seasons? Maybe not. But over five seasons as a head coach, Mike Brown has shown himself to be a good man who can coach basketball.
Coaching jobs in the NBA are a funny thing. Brown likely won’t be getting a slew of plum offers coming his way anytime soon thanks to his reputation, and there’s only so much any coach can do for a team without much talent. I could see him getting a young team to play defense and sneak into the playoffs in the next couple of years, like Larry Brown and Scott Skiles did this season. At this point, I don’t see Mike Brown coaching a serious championship contender anytime in the foreseeable future. There’s a very good chance that Mike Brown will never have big-time success as a head coach, and an even better chance that his accomplishments over the last five years will be widely dismissed. Sports fans like quick narratives, and Mike Brown’s rubber stamp may always read “Over-matched, under-imaginative coach who may have kept LeBron from winning a ring.” That doesn’t mean Brown’s accomplishments as a Cavs coach didn’t happen, or that he doesn’t deserve a bit of respect for those accomplishments. For all that happened, and all that will be said and written, I hope Mike Brown knows that he could have done a much worse job during his time in Cleveland.
Excellent analysis Krolik… pretty much summed up my feelings perfectly.
Agree with most everything except one: Ferry gave Brown the deepest team he’s ever had, one that had a number of pieces able to play multiple different styles of basketball. He did this so this team could match-up with most teams. They could go big with the Magic or Lakers, and run with the likes of Toronto. Yet Mike Brown completely failed to utilize this teams depth vs. the Celtics. Shaq should have played limited minutes vs. the Celtics. He simply was not a good match-up. That’s not monday morning quarterbacking, that’s watching the regular season games. It’s no coincidence the Cavs were getting killed vs. the Celtics with Shaq playing, and then blew their doors off when he left with an injury.
Brown hardly tried a small lineup with James at the 4 vs. the Celtics. Not saying James could stop Garnett, but he’d put up a better fight than Jamison and would do a better job than Shaq on him (that was the move when I knew Brown was doomed).
Brown has done alot for this franchise, and I appreciate him for all he’s done. But his inability to make any sort of in-game adjustments absolutely killed this team this year.
“I hope Mike Brown knows that he could have done a much worse job during his time in Cleveland.”
That’s damning him with faint praise, isn’t it?
Brown is only guilty of the same thing we were all guilty of… underestimating the 2010 Celtics. I’m not blaming him for Lebron’s listless and disconnected performance Gm4-6. Motivating Lebron was not supposed to be part of Mike Brown’s job description.
I’m also not blaming Mike Brown for the Magic’s freakish shooting performance against us in 2009.
I’ll be surprised if we make an improvement in the coaching department.
John, this was a wonderful opinion piece. I appreciate the thoughtfulness. And this sentence: He never did get that title, but neither have a lot of coaches who are held in a different stratosphere of regard than Brown ever will be.
I agree with most of your analysis, John, but I would argue that the bullet points regarding the problems in the Celtics series are a bit off. For example, yes, if Mike Brown had brought in Gibson during the Celtics series, he would’ve been bringing in an ice-cold player. But why was Gibson given so little playing time toward the end of the season? That was Mike Brown’s move, and I saw nothing in Gibson’s play this year to merit his benching. And the Moon/Parker/West situation: Brown was pretty powerless to do anything about Delonte’s complex issues this year that led to his inconsistent play. I think that was a definite part of our struggles. But Moon v Parker? Our defense needed more help than our offense in the series. I’d take the better defender any day after watching the series. And you would think Brown would default to that. Especially since Moon is a better rebounder, and makes plays that may have sparked the Cavs–a big maybe.
I think the thing that sealed it for me was Brown completely blowing up his game plan to deal with Rondo in Game 5. Rondo had an historic night in Game 4. There’s no way he was having that kind of night again. Yes, he had been consistently good all series, but Game 4 was an aberration, not the norm. Brown should’ve known that, but instead, he engaged (in the words of Simmons) in “Panic Coaching 101″. Was Mike Brown the sole reason for the Cavs early exits the past two years? Not even close. Did Mike Brown take the Cavs further in the playoffs than they should have gone the past two years? Again, not even close.
During the first few years of LeBron’s career, the Cavs outperformed themselves in the playoffs compared to the regular season. That has not happened lately, and part of that has to rest on the coach. I always liked Mike Brown, and usually defended him, but I think this was absolutely the right move. The most fair? No. But the right move. Best of luck to him, in all sincerity. Regardless of his merits as a coach, he always seemed like a class act, and that means a lot.
It may have been a perfect storm of badness for Mike Brown this postseason. But he gets paid to make tough decisions and put his team in the best position to win. Did he do that? The answer is a resounding no. He was able to neither make the right adjustment nor get his guys to play with the requisite energy needed (though I’d put more of that on LeBron).
Still if I was Mike Brown, I would have said damn the torpedos, put out the same starting five as last year and said I’ll make my stand with guys who play Defense first and then try to outscore their reserves with two former all-stars.
Or you go small and run. Would it be worth it to go down ten points through three quarters but run those old Celtic legs off. I guarantee KG wouldn’t be hitting step back fadeaway 20 footers in quarter #4.
And who didn’t know that with fresh legs, KG was going to attach Jamison to start EVERY game?!
My point is, anything would have been better than playing similar game plans for 6 games.
I’d love to know how many times the coaches watched the regular season games and why they decided they couldn’t run some of those lineups out there.
Brown is a good coach, and I appreciate what’s he done for the Cavs. No one can take that away from him. But if he’s going to be a great coach. It wasn’t going to happen in Cleveland. He needs to improve areas of his game, just like LeBron (if your jumper’s off because of a bum elbow, you better have the post game to offset the need.) And I hope he does, he’s a good man. But sometimes you need to get into somebody on the bench during a game. Maybe like Pat Riley in the ’06 championship clinching game: “YOU”RE TOUGHER THAN THEY ARE! THEY’RE READY TO FOLD. YOU’RE TOUGHER!!!”
Get some fire, Mike. “We’ll see you on the other side.”
Misspelled “attack”, but you get my point.
Thanks John. I hope Mike Brown gets a chance to read some of these types of pieces and doesn’t just get forwarded 20 or 30 pieces about how he’s clearly been a bad coach since day 1.
Mike Brown was good for this franchise, and I hope people remember what he did for us.
Personally, I think it was time for a change, but I agree that I’m not sure how much better we can do at this point. Here’s hoping it doesn’t backfire horribly and doom us to mediocrity for years because of a bad coaching choice.
Lost in all of this is one simple truth. The Cleveland Cavaliers have been the best team in basketball by a comfortable margin for two years running. 3 years ago they had another excellent look at a title and lost in game 7 vs. the eventual champs where they fumbled away two clearly winnable games. In all three of those series, Mike Brown failed to make the adjustments necessary to stop the bleeding and his “offensive gameplan” was brutally exposed. In the last 2 series, to borrow a Bill Simmons line, he was essentially pants’ed on national TV by Stan Van Gundy and Doc Rivers.
For all the talk about how the Cavs need more talent, there’s a very real chance that with better coaching, the Cavs could currently be the back-to-back champions and working on a threepeat right now. As a Laker fan, we didn’t want any of Cleveland in 2008, every Laker fan I know practically blew their shoulder out giving high-fives when Orlando beat Cleveland in 2009 and the entire league pulled that when the Cavs lost this year as well.
This is why Mike Brown had to go. Nothing against him personally, he seems like a very nice guy who has the respect of his players. But when you have 3 opportunities to win an NBA championship and the closest you come is 6 wins short, you’re going to be fired.
And this is why Mike Brown is really stupid – I mean didn’t he know that he is a goner if Cleveland couldn’t even get past the second round? He should have stuck to the line-up that handily whipped the Celtics in the regular season and damn the torpedoes. Very clearly , Shaq and Jamison on KG and Perks was a recipe for disaster in the play-offs but he choose to overlook the Celtics series thinking the Magic were the team to go to in order ot come out in the East.
“Mike Brown certainly made some mistakes in that Celtics series. 1.) His offense wasn’t complex enough to create open looks against Thibodeau’s defense. 2.) The intensity was not where it needed to be. 3.) He didn’t have his rotations ready for Boston, and 4.) not having enough “small-ball” lineups ready to match Boston’s athleticism was a fatal mistake.”
So to recap, here is you’ve stated that Brown did not do well:
1.) game plan an efficient offense, with the best player on the planet and a guy who was getting 20/10 earlier that year in Washington.
2.) Motivate his team’s intensity level.
3.) Prepare rotations. If the COACH doesn’t adequately prepare for a series, who will?
4.) Adapt to in-game situations with small-ball lineups. He doesn’t prepare BEFORE the series. He can’t analyze the situation to adapt quickly DURING the game. What CAN he do?
You’re defending this guy why? Is he the WORST coach in the nba? Probably not. Is he a good coach? Hell no. Is he a bad coach? Yup.
You cannot credit Lebron James’ rise as the dominant player in the league to Mike Brown. It would’ve happened no matter who was the coach.
What I don’t get is how so many people can easily excuse Mike Brown’s obvious lack of know-how when it comes to coaching offense.
Would you do that for a player? Did we give Larry Hughes a break for not knowing what a good shot looked like? What about Mo Williams for not knowing how to slide his feet defensively? Um…no, we don’t. We kill Mo. I hear people all of the time wanting this team to trade Mo for various reasons that make sense. But yet, Mike Brown is allowed to be totally useless when it comes to coaching offense, and we call him a good coach that maybe didn’t deserve this. REALLY?
Great write-up, John, and I generally agree — except that I think some of the key decisions Brown is paying the price for now were dubious at the time — it’s not just 20-20 hindsight.
Exhibit A: putting Shaq back in the starting lineup after two months of playing without him, and playing quite well. He didn’t “have” to make this choice, he could have put Shaq on the 2nd unit, and cited the timing and need for continuity going into the post-season as his reasons. I think going the other way was a big mistake.
Yes, Hickson got carved up whenever he was on defense, but he was guarding Garnett; as a starter assigned to guard Perkins — and with Varejao getting big minutes on Garnett — things might’ve gone a lot better.
I also think it’s fair to hold Brown to much higher expectations on the offensive side of the ball in this, his 5th year as an NBA head coach, then when he first took over the team. He showed little if any growth in that area during his 5 years on the job, and that by itself is a fair reason to fire him.
Another way of looking this: in any major team sport, not just the NBA, a franchise would have its work cut it out for it to publicly justify “not” firing the head coach or manager after they had the best regular season record two years in a row, and yet failed even to reach the championship round, let alone win it, in either of those seasons.
What I find funny is that like normal, most of the national media is trying to play it up like Brown didn’t deserve this or w/e. I love Barkley, but he makes no sense some times.
Barkley said Brown got screwed and he did a great job with this team. However, Barkley also said this team had the most talent in the league….so how does a 2nd round exit=great coaching job. Second, Barkley, more than anyone, has complained about the Cavs slow pace with LeBron o nthe court…….who does he think is the reason for that? Finally, during the Celtics series, Barkley actually said this “The best Celtics player is Mike Brown.” HOW IN THE WORLD IS THAT A GREAT JOB, CHUCK??!!
No, no, no, no, no. Mike Brown should always have been a defensive assistant, and was over matched as a head coach of a championship contender. It was completely obvious in game 5 that he had lost the trust and respect of his team. When that happens, it doesn’t matter if you’re 12-70, or 61-21, you’ve got to go. The one thing that drives me nuts about all the postseason analysis was not that MB never went small, it’s that he never went big. Moon, LeBron, Jamison, Andy/Hickson, and Shaq/Z would have countered a lot of Boston advantages. It never happened. Additionally, Sam is absolutely right about Boobie. The Cavs played some of their best ball of the season when Mo was hurt. Mo was TERRIBLE at feeding the post, and Boobie was a much better “no frills” point guard. Plus, Boobie was must better at defense.
Ugh. Anyway, there were a myriad of problems: the total malaise at the end of the season that carried over into the post season, the inability to coach LeBron or any of his “stars” (he never challenged one, nor worked on correcting their flaws), the inability to have any imagination with the lineups, the fact that they consistently made mistakes at the ends of games, the inability to design or run plays for a 20 point per game scorer (Jamison). the inability to bench Shaq, the inability to figure out effect lineups Wayne Winston style, and biggest of all the inability to inspire confidence.
Brown should’ve been fired after the Spurs finals, after the Magic semifinals, and after Game 5 against the Celtics. I have no sympathy for Mr. Potato head. This was probably the most underachieving 61 win team ever. The team could have won 75 with the talent they had, but they were content to always wait to be great, and anyone who waits for greatness never achieves it. Pat Riley never would have let his team play like they did at times this year. I hope the next coach they get can motivate this team, LbJ or not.
I would just like to take some time and say I freaking love Alvin Gentry as a coach. If I were in the NBA, and could play for any coach in the league, it would be him. What he’s done with the Suns this year has been amazing.
Eh, HoopsDog, Pat Riley “let” that Miami team just kind of stroll through the regular season on their way to like 52 wins or something. Remember, that team not only had Shaq and Wade, but also went out and got Antoine Walker, Gary Payton, James Posey, Jason Williams. and Alonzo Morning. Pretty loaded team that shouldn’t have played the way it did in the regular season.
The Celtics looked god awful in the regular season too. So it isn’t like great coaches don’t have teams that just kind of stroll through the regular season with some really bad moments on the way to a title.
For me it comes down to this: Mike Brown is a great regular season coach, but sub-par playoffs coach. It’s just that his coaching flaws (in-game adjustments, player motivation, late-game plays) happen to be the things that really kill you in a playoff series, as his body of work has shown. In just about every series he’s lost, it’s pretty clear who the better coach (and thus the better TEAM) was. It wouldn’t have mattered if we got past Boston, and even Orlando (which I now doubt), we wouldn’t have beaten Phil Jackson and the Lakers in a 7 game series, not with Mike Brown at the helm. I kinda think that LeBron knew this, that he wasn’t going to win a ring with Mike Brown even if he went all out every game. He did that before, only to get swept by the well-coached Spurs. Might as well cut your losses now instead of setting yourself up for more heartbreaking disappointment by getting ever so closer to the championship, only to be ripped away by a better prepared team.
I’ve always liked Mike Brown and appreciate what he’s done, because it’s so easy to overlook. But what killed it for me was the end of the regular season. It wasn’t the benching of starters, but during the last few games (particularly the last one), he couldn’t keep the Cavs competitive at all. That’s not what you want in the playoffs. I brushed it off at the time thinking it’s only because he’s looking ahead, but it proved to be more symptomatic. Plus, all his talk about tinkering with different lineups didn’t result in anything.
I think most would agree that if the Cavs had a “playoff” coach (at least these past 2 seasons) we’d have championships or at least Finals appearances, though at the cost of best regular season records. Look at Doc Rivers. He might not be known as the best Xs and Os guy (like a Stan Van Gundy) but he gets it done in the playoffs. If we had someone like a Jeff Van Gundy (for example) we might still be watching Cavs basketball right now. But Brown does deserve another chance, he’d be best with a young team. But until he grows as a coach, he won’t make it far in the playoffs. Given enough time he could develop into a championship contending coach, but we don’t have that time.
On a side note, how many recent Coach of the Years have been fired after a couple years? Guess the expectations get too high once you win one of those. Maybe Sloan is better off not getting one, or at least that explains his tenure.