Around and Around He Goes, Where He Stops... : EVERYBODY GROWS : Larry Brown Is Basketball’s Miracle Worker, but Don’t Expect to See Him at UCLA Again

Genius, capitalist, visionary, bedouin, almost twice but probably not future UCLA coach, Larry Brown returns to his beloved Southern California . . . for a visit.

His Indiana Pacers are here to play the Lakers tonight, a greater inconvenience than usual and not only because of Shaquille O’Neal. Brown will have to deny the dreaded Bruin Question. If it’s a compliment--how many coaches retain appeal after leaving the local university twice and one of the professional teams once?--he insists it’s a pain in the neck.

“I don’t think it’s fair,” Brown said a few days ago, stonily, in the team’s hotel in San Jose. “It’s not fair to this kid [UCLA interim Coach Steve Lavin], it’s not fair to their program and it’s not fair to us.

“You know, people joke about it. They just put your name out there, but they don’t realize how many people they hurt or affect. I get tired of it. . . .

“Anyway, I started this season 2-6. I might be a better candidate for Taco Cabana.”

UCLA officials have gone as far as to comment on potential candidates--refusing to rule out Brown--but the official posture is that Lavin has a chance to stay. Even after the season, Brown is considered a longshot. His $2.5-million salary is $2.1 million more than UCLA has ever paid. For millions, the Bruins expect buildings, which they’re guaranteed to keep.

Brown left them in 1981 and seven years later, after accepting the job, did a U-turn. If UCLA isn’t ready to move beyond him by now, it ought to rename itself UCLB, the University of California Larry Brown.

Nevertheless, important UCLA officials still seem dazzled by Brown, which may explain why his name keeps popping up on the talk-show circuit.

ESPN now practically functions as a Bruin search committee, with Dick Vitale championing John Calipari and Digger Phelps pushing Brown. This week it was hard-hitting anchor Keith Olbermann, passing on a tidbit from an undisclosed source--or kidding--who noted while narrating Pacer highlights: “A report from L.A., Brown talking to UCLA.”

College mavens Vitale and Phelps are desperate to invigorate their beleaguered game. Vitale can be expected to hype some friend of his next, Phelps to float another big name (Oprah?). Olbermann may have needed a line.

Back on Earth, nothing is happening.

“I haven’t heard from them [UCLA],” Pacer President Donnie Walsh said. “Larry has a contract. If they’re interested, some time I expect to hear from them. Until then, I’m not going to the next step.

“We’ve created a very good job for him here, I think, a hard one to match. But who knows?”

Walsh, Brown’s friend, college teammate at North Carolina and assistant coach at Denver, has seen it all before. It’s part of the Larry Brown Experience. You sign on, you have to take the whole ride.

*

There’s a reason this keeps happening: If you’re general manager of a directionless team or athletic director of a threadbare program, Brown is the best there is to turn your sorry situation around.

Before he leaves, the story is always the same: He takes your team/program to barely imaginable heights.

His first team, the Carolina Cougars, had the best finish in their short American Basketball Assn. history.

His Denver Nuggets posted an ABA record for victories, then joined the NBA as a 50-win team.

His first UCLA team, starting four freshmen, reached the NCAA final, the lone Bruin appearance between 1975 and 1995.

His New Jersey Nets, 24-48 before he arrived, finished over .500 for the first time in the NBA.

His Kansas Jayhawks won their only NCAA title since 1952.

His San Antonio Spurs posted the two winningest records in the first 24 years of the franchise’s history.

His Clippers reached the playoffs--losing close fifth games in Salt Lake City and Houston--the franchise’s only postseason appearances in the last 20 years.

His Pacers, who had never won an NBA playoff series, reached the Eastern finals in his first two seasons.

Of course, you won’t be the last to try to hire him. Last spring, after two years of glory ended with injuries to Rik Smits and Reggie Miller and a first-round upset by the Atlanta Hawks, a new Dallas Maverick administration came calling. The Pacers say Brown’s name got out before they gave anyone permission, leading Walsh to threaten tampering charges. The Mavericks withdrew and fired General Manager Norm Sonju for botching it.

Nevertheless, it was a big-bucks, control-everything package like the Pat Riley and Calipari deals, and Brown was intrigued.

“They came after me,” Brown says, “with kind of a situation that I could be in control and coach as long as I wanted, or not coach and have an opportunity to build a team.

“It wasn’t so much that I wanted to go there, but Donnie gave me permission to talk and I wanted to listen. There’s nothing wrong with my job and I love it, but Donnie always made me feel like if I could ever get a situation like that, he would never stand in my way. And I just wanted to hear what they had to say. They didn’t handle it real well. There were a lot of problems. So I went in and spoke to Donnie in the end and said, hey, I was staying.

“When I look back on it, I don’t think many people could be in a situation like I have, where I’m working for one of my dearest friends. . . .

“That doesn’t mean that some day if something like that presents itself, that you wouldn’t have an interest. I think you’d be foolish not to think about something like it because I want to be with my family. I don’t know if our pro game lends itself to that as a career coach.”

*

With Brown, you get more than a basketball coach.

He operates on a higher plane, approaching Utopia. He considers his game an art form (which, he feels, is being abandoned) and his calling a profession (which, he feels, many cheat). He doesn’t simply want to win; he yearns to be teacher, mentor, head of an extended family.

Amazingly, briefly, he comes close.

“He told you, ‘You know, I expect you to peek your head in here,’ ” UCLA assistant coach Michael Holton, one of Brown’s Bruins, once said.

“When he saw you and he said, ‘Hey, how you doing, kiddo?’--which is how he talks--what he meant was, come into my office, sit down and visit for a few minutes.

“Sometimes you walk through Coach’s office and you see Coach and you say hi, you go about your business. I got to the point where I didn’t go there with anybody. When I’d go through there, I knew I’d have to have 10 or 15 minutes blocked out because if I bumped into Coach, we were going to visit.”

Players and students followed Brown as if he were the Pied Piper. More than a program, he wanted a place in the heart, with kids who were part of the student body, not mercenaries, who would stay in touch after leaving and come back when they could. His players gave up apartment life to live on campus at his request; he bought doughnuts for the students sleeping overnight outside Pauley Pavilion, did the Icky La Boom Ba cheer (“Icky La Boom Ba! Icky La Picky Wicky! Opa Tee Ah!”) for them.

When Brown left, he pined openly for UCLA. His wife, Shelly, whom he met during his Clipper stint, is from the San Fernando Valley and there’s no getting around it--they both miss Southern California.

Nonetheless, Indiana has been good for them.

“I love it,” Brown says. “I’m not crazy about the weather, but it’s been great for my family. Surprisingly, Shelly loves it. The baby came at the right time. I think it’s helped me in a lot of ways, having a family, being more responsible. I missed out on my first family.”

His first family produced three daughters, now grown up. Shelly bore his first son, L.J., 2 1/2 years ago when Larry was 53, and she’s pregnant again. Brown, leery before becoming a father in his 50s, is now ecstatic.

“When you’re starting out,” he says, “you want to be so good at what you’re doing, you have your career here and everything else. And that’s the way I was. I still want to be the best and I still want to do a good job, but I think I can put things in order.

“I take L.J. to ‘Space Jam,’ ‘101 Dalmatians.’ It’s a shock. My youngest daughter came and visited me. I asked, ‘Did I ever do this stuff with you?

“She said, ‘Oh, you did fine.’

“I don’t remember that, and I know I didn’t.”

Brown is in his fourth season in Indiana. If he finishes it, it will trail only his five-year stint at Kansas. As NBA franchises go, the Pacers exude warm, fuzzy feelings. The team’s star, Miller, native Californian, lives in Indianapolis year-round. Former stars like George McGinnis, Mel Daniels, Roger Brown, Billy Knight and former coach Slick Leonard are still part of things.

Brown’s contract stipulates he must be paid the average of the top three NBA coaches, so anyone who’s interested had better come loaded.

Someone always seems interested: a pro team offering millions plus control? UCLA appealing to his sentimental side? An enterprising high school principal? (This isn’t as silly as it sounds. Brown says he’d really love to coach preps, if he can save enough first.)

After that, who knows, indeed?