The Lakers are expected to hire Mike Brown as their next head coach--replacing no less than Phil Jackson--and anytime the Lakers do anything, it gets people talking. SB Nation Los Angeles took a look around the web to see what folks are saying about the hire.
SB Nation NBA editor Tom Ziller writes "Brown is exactly what the Lakers need: a defensive tactician who will let Kobe [Bryant] and Pau Gasol be who Kobe and Pau need to be," though he is concerned with the potentially volatile combination of Kobe's desire to shoot a lot and "Brown's mix of chillaxness and lack of clout." As usual, Ziller supplements his analysis with a great visual, comparing Jackson and Brown using the Coaching Tri-force Classification System.
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Last Friday, C.A. Clark of Silver Screen and Roll said the following about Brown:
Mike Brown knows a thing or two about defense, but he thrills me as a head coaching candidate about as much as a Saturday afternoon pulling weeds in my backyard.
So what does Clark's SSR colleague Dexter Fishmore think about the hire?
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Fishmore is far less diplomatic. Just take a look at his headline here:
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Brian Kamenetzky of ESPN Los Angeles invited Cavs blogger John Krolik to answer some questions about Brown. Krolik, purveyor of Cavs: The Blog, watches the wine-and-gold as closely as anyone, and he knows the game exceptionally well, so one dismisses his answers at one's own peril. This exchange, about Brown's poor offensive reputation, is particularly enlightening:
1. Brown has been roundly criticized for his lack of creativity offensively in Cleveland. How much of that was about him, how much was about personnel?
Krolik: It was almost entirely about the latter. The Cavaliers were very good offensively in Brown's last two seasons -- in fact, they had a better offensive efficiency mark than the Lakers did in '09-'10, and finished one tenth of a point per 100 possessions in '08-'09.
In Krolik's opinion, Brown got more out of LeBron James in Cleveland than Erik Spoelstra has with the Miami Heat. However, the assessment gets less rosy when it comes to Brown's fit with the Lakers. When Kamenetzky asks Krolik about how well Los Angeles' personnel jibes with Brown's philosophy, Krolik responds, "Not at all." The whole interview is well worth a read.