Olympic Nod to Go to Brown

Larry Brown, who won an NCAA title at Kansas and reached the NBA Finals with Philadelphia, is expected to be named coach of the U.S. men’s basketball team for the 2004 Olympics today.

USA Basketball, which runs the team, has called a news conference in New York to announce its choice. However, word leaked after last week’s meeting of the senior committee that Brown had been selected.

Brown has already announced that he’d be pleased to go, if selected. Last week in Philadelphia, he called it “the greatest honor going.”

Under Milwaukee Buck Coach George Karl at last summer’s World Championship, the U.S. lost for the first time since NBA players started representing the country internationally in 1992, ultimately dropping three games and finishing an inglorious sixth.

That has prompted a cry for the league’s best players to participate. The Lakers’ Kobe Bryant has already said he’s interested in playing for Brown.

On the other hand, Shaquille O’Neal joked last week that if Phil Jackson wasn’t selected, he thought he might have a sore knee in 2004.

Brown, Jackson, Miami’s Pat Riley and Utah’s Jerry Sloan were the final candidates. Of the four, only Brown had international experience.

Brown has been taking U.S. teams abroad for more than 10 years. Most recently, he coached the U.S. team in the 1999 Olympic qualifying tournament in Puerto Rico, then served as Rudy Tomjanovich’s assistant at Sydney, Australia, in 2000 as the Americans won the gold medal.

Brown also won a gold medal as a player at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964.

Unlike most NBA coaches, Brown has coached at the college level too, at UCLA, where he reached the NCAA final in 1980, and at Kansas, where he won an NCAA title in 1988.

College coaches must learn how to contend with the zone defenses. Pro coaches never did until last season, when the NBA lifted its ban on zones.

With the Americans’ once-imposing talent differential narrowing, the tactical ability of the coach becomes more important, especially since many international teams also use zone defenses.