A Frank Assessment: Coach Is a Winner

New Jersey Net Coach Lawrence Frank got off to the best start of any coach in professional sports history. He’s also the only head coach in the history of pro sports whose couch I slept on in college.

When Frank was the basketball team manager at Indiana University, I was going to Northwestern with Adam Hirschfelder, Frank’s classmate from Teaneck (N.J.) High, (right up the New Jersey Turnpike from the Meadowlands). So whenever I went down to Indiana -- whether to cover a game for the Daily Northwestern or to check out the “Little 500” bicycle race made famous by the movie “Breaking Away” -- I stayed with Frank.

Everyone called him “L.”

So what should I call him now that he has gone from unlikely head coach to unprecedented success?

Coach Frank, as his players do? Or even Mr. Frank, as he was called throughout a profile in a New Jersey section of the New York Times?

“Just ‘L,’ ” he said, after a large media contingent cleared out of his office before the Net game against the Lakers on Sunday.

In other words, he’s still the same guy I met a dozen years ago. There he was Sunday, scribbling the game plan and scouting report on the locker room board, a task that’s usually performed by the assistants.

“He doesn’t take it too seriously,” Net forward Richard Jefferson said. “He’s living a dream, but he has fun with it. He understands how fickle this business is.”

Frank learned all the humility he needed when he was cut every year he tried out for the basketball team at Teaneck High, a story that somehow has become as much a part of NBA lore as Michael Jordan getting cut at Laney High his freshman year.

At the young age of 33, Frank took over for Byron Scott on Jan. 26, after it became clear that the Nets had stopped playing for Scott, losing five games in a row, including a fate-deciding blowout in Miami.

“No. 1, you’re totally caught off-guard when Byron got fired,” Frank said. “But once the transition [happened], you just have a job to do. It’s not as big a deal as people try to make it seem to be. We’re a very good team. I’ve been fortunate to have been around these guys for 3 1/2 years. We have a job to do.”

It took L more than four weeks to get his first “L.” The Nets earned 13 consecutive victories, as Frank passed former Laker coach Kurt Rambis for the best start in NBA history (9-0), then topped baseball managers Joe Morgan of the 1988 Boston Red Sox and James Price of the 1884 New York Gothams (12-0) for the best start in all of pro sports in North America.

Along the way, the jokes about Frank shifted from his anonymity to his appearance.

Let’s face it, he doesn’t have the air of a classic coach from central casting. He looks more like someone from Middle Earth -- the Shire, to be precise.

He’s 5 feet 8, and with his youthful face there isn’t a bar in the country that would let him in without ID.

His appearance prompted this exchange on “Pardon The Interruption:”

Michael Wilbon: “If Lawrence Frank came to your house wearing a T-shirt that said ‘Lawrence Frank,’ you wouldn’t even know him. He looks like the paper boy.”

Tony Kornheiser: “I would assume he’s selling cookies at that point.”

But that’s the crazy thing; they’re actually talking about him on a TV show. He’s sitting down for interviews with CNN and Japanese TV and being heralded on the back pages of the New York tabloids.

And no one in the media gets off better laugh lines about Frank than “L” himself. When he was asked Sunday if he ever envisioned his life if he would have grown to 7-2, Frank said: “5-9 would’ve been good.”

It’s not that we couldn’t see his success coming. Anyone who goes to Indiana simply to apprentice at the feet of Bob Knight clearly has long-term vision.

“The only surprising thing for anybody who has known him is that it happened so fast,” said Hirschfelder, our mutual friend. “Maybe in 10 or 20 years, sure.

“I was talking to a friend. We were reminiscing about how L, when we were playing pickup basketball, would direct us on the court about how to box out.”

At Indiana he showed his ability to relate to players. He even shared an apartment with Hoosier star Calbert Cheaney and teammate Chris Reynolds.

“He was a fun guy to be around,” said Cheaney, a Golden State Warrior. “At the same time, he works really hard. If you asked him to do something, he would do it. He was in it. Whatever he does, he does 100%.

“He was either studying or he was at Assembly Hall [the basketball arena]. Sometimes you wouldn’t see him until late that night. He was always working, always putting in his time.”

During L’s first gig as an assistant at Marquette, I only had one phone number for him. I assumed it was his home, until one late conversation when he told me he had to leave and get back home; it turns out I had been calling him and catching him at the office every time.

Brian Hill gave Frank his entry into the professional ranks in 1997, when Hill coached the Vancouver Grizzlies.

“I just liked his passion for the game,” Hill said. “He did an outstanding job with the interview process. He was a guy that you wanted to give an opportunity to. You could tell that once he got his foot in the door he was going to run with it, he was going to make it work.”

When Scott came to the Nets in the summer of 2000, he hired Frank.

“I really brought him in as a scout,” Scott said. “After a month of sitting down and talking to him and meeting with him, I said, ‘You know what? I still have one position left. I think you’re good enough to take that position.’ And he was. And he’s done a terrific job.”

Sometimes that isn’t enough. Scott took the team to consecutive NBA Finals and it wasn’t enough to keep him employed. The Minnesota Timberwolves stopped Frank’s streak on Wednesday and the Lakers beat the Nets, 100-83, Sunday, serving as a reminder that most of Frank’s victories came against weak Eastern Conference teams.

No matter how much reality kicks in, it still seems surreal. That was L, the same guy who used to pick up towels and pass out water at Indiana, coaching against Phil Jackson.

“It’s amazing, isn’t’ it?” Cheaney said. “It’s amazing. That’s all I can say.”

J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to j.a.adande@latimes.com.