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Friday, August 13

Olympics could tarnish Brown's legacy

ATHENS, Greece - Pity Larry Brown, poor little rich coach. He spent his entire NBA life searching for the ultimate victory lap, and what did that destruction of the Laker dynasty get him, other than an Olympic burden heavier than the one Michael Phelps will take head-first into the pool?

You think Phelps has pressure trying to carry these Summer Games, trying to break Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals? Phelps has only himself to let down.

Brown? He's not coaching for the Detroit Pistons or Kansas Jayhawks anymore.

He's coaching for a country, the one that delivered his game to the world. Brown is coaching for all that peach-basket, heartland mythology. He's coaching for superiority in a sport that's being pulled away from its homecourt shores, slowly but surely, toward a time in the future when the Barcelona Dream Team will stand as America's Parthenon - a great monument battered by the forces of men and time.

``We don't have a Dream Team,'' Brown said Friday. ``The Dream Team was `92.''

Only that hasn't changed the rules of engagement. Brown has brought a multi-millionaire band of NBA All-Stars to Athens. He has the best players and the best athletes.

Nobody cares that he might not have the best team.

Larry Brown simply cannot lose the Olympics, not after Chuck Daly, Lenny Wilkens and Rudy T didn't lose them. He can't go down as the NBA's answer to Hank Iba, coach of the `72 team that fell to the Soviets in Munich. Iba was playing college boys against men, and the officials gave the Soviets as many do-overs as they needed to win that Cold War fight.

Brown won't have any such excuses. It doesn't matter that his selection committee was slam-dunked by the likes of Shaq, Kobe, T-Mac and Kevin Garnett. It doesn't matter that the committee couldn't find a true point guard, or a true shooter, or a true roster of players hardened by international experience.

Brown can't let himself be sacrificed at the altar of a shrinking basketball world. His reputation and legacy are at stake. His future obit is on the line. A silver, bronze or worse means that obit will begin, ``Larry Brown, the first American basketball coach to lose an Olympic competition with NBA players ...'' before it gets around to that title with the Pistons and that title with the Jayhawks and that gold medal he won as a player in Tokyo 40 years back.

You think Brown doesn't know it? In a news conference Friday, he already sounded like a guy preparing for a night when he'd have to explain the fall of an empire.

``This is the youngest team we've ever sent with pro athletes,'' Brown said, ``with the least number of days to prepare.''

America's coach kept up with the excuse abuse. Some additional alibis:

- ``I don't know why anybody would be in awe of us anymore. If you look in the NBA, we have foreign players all over making an unbelievable contribution. We came in sixth in our homecourt in the last world championship. ...''

- ``I've learned that we can't do this with so little time to prepare. We can't continue to do this, in my mind, without a trials where players try out for the right to play on this team. We can't continue to do this with a different set of rules. I hope that someday we have one set of basketball rules for everybody.''

- ``In the future, we're going to need more time. It's not really fair to these kids. ... I think the world's catching up. I think our rules really hurt our players when they come into this kind of environment. Argentina's been together for 10 years. ... We pick a team and all of a sudden give them two weeks to get ready.''

Brown complained that his players weren't the same players who qualified in Puerto Rico. He said he only hoped that the blowout loss to Italy and Germany's near-miss upset on the exhibition trail had changed his team's poor attitude.

``I don't know if our kids respected our opponents like the coaches did,'' Brown said.

Of course, it's one man's job to ensure that respect is written into every star's playbook. Brown is supposed to be the best basketball coach alive, or damn close to it. Somehow, some way, the best basketball coach alive should find a way to win gold with the best basketball player alive, Tim Duncan.

Forget the opponents' zone defenses. Forget their shooting range. Forget their command of fundamental play.

Remember that Brown has Duncan and Allen Iverson, Stephon Marbury and LeBron James. Remember that every single international coach in the field would kill for that kind of talent.

``These kids found out very late that they would be on this team,'' Brown said. ``It wasn't their fault.''

It sounded like the first draft of a concession speech.

``I think these guys gave up a lot to come to play,'' Brown said, ``and everybody in America, if they're not proud of the commitment that these guys showed, they don't have the message straight. ... We've got to do the best job with the people we have. We can't worry about the people who are not here.''

Deep down, Brown has to be worrying about the people who are not here. He has to know that a Shaq and a Jason Kidd would've guaranteed him a clear lane to an NBA, NCAA and Olympic trifecta.

``Our `92 team was much better than everybody,'' Brown said. ``Our `96 team was much better than everybody; it wasn't even close. But everybody's catching up.''

The American coach can hear the footsteps. Brown was asked if he felt like the favorite to win the gold medal, and he said he did not.

At 62 and just two months removed from his dismantling of the Lakers, Brown didn't need this potential legacy-buster. ``The greatest single honor I've had as a coach,'' he maintained, ``is to be selected the coach of our Olympic team.''

Right now, that honor is heavier than the anchor weighing down his team's floating hotel, the Queen Mary 2.

Time for Larry Brown to sink or swim.

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