West Goes With a Grizzled Veteran

Hope you liked the honeymoon, ‘cause here comes the marriage....

Jerry West, Laker icon turned Grizzlies’ reason to hope, knew hard times were coming but he didn’t necessarily think they had to start opening night.

A man who lived with enough fear in his own career, he is loath to fire people if he has a choice, which was one reason he kept Sidney Lowe, the nice-guy Memphis coach with the 79-220 career record he inherited and crossed his fingers.

That lasted two whole weeks before he felt obliged to tell Lowe he had flunked the audition. While a journey of 1,000 miles might start with a single step, the Grizzlies were 0-8 and still at the starting line.

West then shocked the (basketball) world with his choice as successor, Hubie Brown. This was not just a surprise because Hubie is 69 and hasn’t coached in 15 years, but because no one knew he had a friend left who would hire him.

Not that there isn’t logic behind it. It’s like West hiring Del Harris in 1994 to teach his young Lakers traditional NBA values. Harris took a 33-49 team to 53-29 in two seasons, making it possible to recruit Orlando’s Shaquille O’Neal, who wouldn’t have come if they had still been rebuilding.

Of course, Delmer was a kindly grandfather type. Hubie is more like an elderly pit bull.

ESPN’s Bill Walton, who has worked with Brown on TV, now claims Hubie is “very much calmed down” and “mellowed.”

Or not.

“I’ve just been laughing for the last 15 minutes, wondering if he’s lost his mind,” Louisville Coach Rick Pitino, a former Brown assistant, told the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

Brown is from the Old, Old, School, before they outlawed corporal punishment. He drove players profanely and in a way that would now be called abusive (e.g., referring to Atlanta Hawk star John Drew as “cement head” and “moron”).

He was disliked by peers, not that he conceded he had very many. In his favorite off-season activity, speaking (down) at clinics, he sneered openly at opposing coaches, especially such former players as Billy Cunningham and Kevin Loughery. Sports Illustrated’s Bruce Newman captured Brown in a memorable piece. Years later, still resisting the thought that he might be the source of his own problems, pausing for emphasis in his inimitable style, Brown told another SI writer:

“That ... [expletive] ... story ... ruined ... my ... [expletive]

Just because he was pedantic, strident and/or obnoxious, however, didn’t mean Brown couldn’t coach. He started a school of NBA coaches, the so-called “Five Star Guys,” who’d met as college assistants at Howard Garfinkel’s Five Star Camp for prep players in western Pennsylvania.

Pitino’s first NBA job was on Brown’s Knick staff. Mike Fratello was an assistant in Atlanta. Chuck Daly was an assistant with Hubie on Vic Bubas’ Duke staff in the ‘60s.

The Five Star Guys were mostly fire-eating overachieving little Catholic League guards who revered their coaches and expected to be treated the same way.

They were mutts, fighting their way up from Podunk schools (in his late 30s, Daly was still coaching high school in Punxutawney, Pa.). They worked harder and knew more Xs and O’s, but the NBA players-turned-coaches got the jobs as head coaches with the best teams. The Five Star Guys considered themselves blessed to get a $20,000-a-year job as No. 3 assistant.

Five Star Guys were driven, and some were out of control. A general manager once said you had to watch them; sometimes they weren’t just staying up nights watching videotape or drawing Xs and O’s on napkins in diners, but scheming to get your job.

West’s heretofore innocent/clueless Kiddie Corps is about to learn a new bare-knuckle philosophy. Talk about your duel of titans: Mr. Authority meets the rebel chieftain, hard-headed, tattoo-adorned Jason Williams.

“Basically, he told us it’s either his way or the highway,” forward Stromile Swift said after their first meeting with Brown. “I don’t know how well a lot of the players are going to accept him, so it’s going to be interesting.”

In other words, you could color Swift gone.

On the other hand, West may have felt obliged to go for broke, with so many normal avenues to advancement, such as draft picks and free agents, already cut off.

He not only has the league’s youngest roster, playing in its smallest market, but the residue of years of bumbling that has littered the franchise with mistakes.

Owner Michael Heisley’s first move, upon taking over two seasons ago, was to hire a family friend, Dick Versace, to head the operation, missing the fact that the blabby former coach and broadcaster wasn’t unemployed by accident.

Versace, now powerless, still rattles around the organizational directory at $3 million a year.

On their way out of Vancouver, Heisley ordered Versace to dump salary, which was why Mike Bibby became a star in Sacramento, rather than Memphis. Then, without consulting Versace, Heisley signed Williams and Michael Dickerson to $43-million extensions. Dickerson promptly got hurt and has played six games since.

They’re still paying for ancient mistakes, such as the 1997 trade of next spring’s No. 1 pick to Detroit (unless the Grizzlies draw the first overall pick).

In return, they got grumpy, old Otis Thorpe, whose career with the Grizzlies lasted 51 games.

West inherited an outlandish $61-million payroll, which means they will pay about $8 million in luxury tax ... and won’t get the $3 million in returned escrow from players that goes to teams under the tax threshold ... and they have no cap space.

With young prospects Pau Gasol, Drew Gooden and Shane Battier, they still could have a future.

Hopefully, Hubie really has mellowed and enough of them will survive their indoctrination to pursue it locally.

Faces and Figures

Dear Donald (cont.): Clipper officials keep asking when the free-agents-without-contracts story will go away so they can get on with their season. Try never, as last week’s trip to Miami demonstrated. The rebuilding Heat will have cap room next summer and alert local reporters fanned out over the Clipper dressing room to see who might be interested. Said Michael Olowokandi: “I’m not sure if before the games that the mind-set of the guys [is on contracts]. We want to play and win for pride. We’re not doing it to show management but for the team. It would be nice if management did [take care of its players], but I very much doubt it.” Said Lamar Odom, remembering his pre-draft workout in Miami: “I feel like in those couple of days I built a little relationship with Coach [Pat Riley.] Maybe we’ll meet up again one day. I hope so.” Even Riley got into it, acknowledging: “I think a lot of GMs -- I know I do -- look at their roster and it’s just loaded with talent, young talent.”

There was a lot of speculation for the San Antonio-New Jersey game last week, since Tim Duncan talks freely about how wanting to play with his friend, upcoming free agent Jason Kidd. However, Spur insiders say the team hopes that Tony Parker will be their point guard, allowing them to sign a center to replace the retiring David Robinson -- with Olowokandi as first choice. On the other hand, if Duncan, who can opt out too, is down on Parker at season’s end and tells them to go after Kidd, that’s what the Spurs will do.

Utah elder John Stockton, who spurns publicity in the best of times, is upset at all the questions he’s getting about retiring as he and Karl Malone approach free agency and the team struggles. “I get tired of hearing my name after a while and I know people out there are too,” he said. “If it were me, I’d be thinking, ‘Retire already. Or don’t retire. Whatever.’ I guess I take it as part of the territory. But you can only beat so much out of a dead mule.” ... Duh: Portland General Manager Bob Whitsitt, defying conventional wisdom once more, signed free agents Jeff McInnis and Antonio Daniels, now -- surprise! -- having trouble dividing time with starter Damon Stoudamire. McInnis stomped out of the dressing room after not getting in one game, then played the next two while Stoudamire, averaging 7.8 points and shooting 35%, argued with Coach Maurice Cheeks on the bench....

The Cleveland Cavaliers’ Ricky Davis and Tyrone Hill complained that management wouldn’t sign Rod Strickland, leaving them with Bimbo Coles and Milt Palacio at the point. Coach John Lucas, walking a tightrope, since he wanted Strickland too, said he told his players to look at it this way: “You guys probably want Phil Jackson [as coach]. I probably want these guys [Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant]. What we have is each other and that’s good enough for me.” Davis then argued with Coles in a game, was taken out and refused to take part in warmups before the second half.... Turner Sports’ John Thompson, ending a discussion of what went wrong for Denver’s Rodney White in Detroit as White fired off a 20-foot airball: “Did you see that shot? That’s what went wrong.”

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Elder Statesmen

Hubie Brown became the second-oldest coach in NBA history this week at 69 when he was hired by the Memphis Grizzlies. Only Bill Bertka, the longtime Laker assistant who coached the team for one game in 1999 at 71, was older. The 10 oldest active coaches:

*--* Coach Team Birthdate Age Hubie Brown Memphis Sept. 25, 1933 69 Lenny Wilkens Toronto Oct. 28, 1937 65 Don Nelson Dallas May 15, 1940 62 Larry Brown Philadelphia Sept. 14, 1940 62 Jerry Sloan Utah March 28, 1942 60 Paul Silas New Orleans July 12, 1943 59 Pat Riley Miami March 20,1945 57 Phil Jackson Lakers Sept. 17, 1945 57 Don Chaney New York March 22, 1946 56 Rick Adelman Sacramento June 16, 1946 56

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