PHILADELPHIA—No one will probably be happier than Larry Brown when the calendar flips to 2016 in a couple of weeks. After all, 2015 has been a year he’d simply rather forget. It wasn’t a brutal year for Brown just because the 75-year-old fourth-year coach of SMU is still serving a nine-game NCAA-imposed suspension for what’s been termed “academic fraud” and “unethical conduct” while his Mustangs have been banned from post-season play this season. That came months after the American Athletic Conference
Should Have Seen This Coming? Not With The Media’s Love For Legendary Larry Brown
Larry Brown was like your grandfather. Or at least, that’s how everyone around college basketball described him. He was an unchallenged legend, revered as one of the game’s great teachers, a man who could parachute in to an irrelevant program in a borderline-irrelevant conference and turn it into a budding basketball hotbed. He was old (75), small, gentle and soft-spoken. He wore little circle glasses, paced around nervously and looked and acted like an English Lit professor. He talked constantly about teaching kids, teaching
Rookie Rankings, Week 15: For His Birthday, Wiggins Has a T Party
Earlier this week, we ran a blog post that led with the fact that Andrew Wiggins is running away with the Rookie of the Year race. What the post did not fully explain is how far ahead Wiggins is when compared to the rest of his classmates. It’s more than the injuries to fellow 2014 draft picks such as Jabari Parker, Joel Embiid, Aaron Gordon and Julius Randle which propelled Wiggins to the head of the class almost by default. It’s more than Wiggins
Bernucca: Thunder’s Big Problem is Jackson, Not Westbrook or Durant
There were two pieces of bad news coming out of Loud City this weekend. And there was a disproportionate reaction to the wrong one. There was far too much hand-wringing to the news that Russell Westbrook will be joining fellow Oklahoma City Thunder superstar Kevin Durant on the sidelines after undergoing surgery on his broken right hand. The Thunder are going to survive November without Durant and Westbrook. They have 14 games between now and Dec. 1, the projected earliest return for
Gonzalez: Three Keys to the Finals for Each Coach
I have always pondered the challenge of being an NBA coach, so here’s my attempt at coming up with three different key strategies for both coaches and teams to implement if they are going to win the championship. I personally feel that San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich is not only the premier coach in the game today, I actually believe he is one of the greatest leaders of any sport in the history of our country. On the other side you have Miami’s
SH Blog: James says Spurs don’t like the Heat, Bird says Stephenson’s game is unlimited once he matures
A rematch between the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals seemed questionable before the playoffs began with the West looking so unpredictable and the Miami Heat not looking quite like the consistent championship team they’re supposed to be with Dwyane Wade’s health in question once again. When the Spurs struggled mightily against the Dallas Mavericks in the first round, it made it that much harder to figure out who might come out of the West. Once they got
PODCAST: How Will Adam Silver Put His Stamp on the NBA?
This is not David Stern’s NBA anymore. The old commissioner is out of sight and out of mind, but his successor has been keeping a relatively low profile. Sooner or later, Adam Silver is going to put his imprint on the NBA … it is just a matter of when. [Read more…]
Tweet of the Day: Former NBA PF Danny Manning Named HC For Wake Forest
26 years ago today, power forward Danny Manning led the Larry Brown coached Kansas Jayhawks to a National Championship, scoring 31 points against the Oklahoma Sooners. For the past two college basketball seasons, Manning has been the head coach at the University of Tulsa, where his efforts culminated in a 21-13 record, tying for first in Conference USA. He led the Golden Hurricanes to the second round of the NCAA Tournament, where they fell to UCLA. Now, he’s on the move again,