Commentary: Why Larry Brown could be a low-risk, high-reward addition to the UW men’s basketball staff

SEATTLE – Researching Larry Brown’s career this week, here are a few phrases that showed up in a variety of articles over a span of 30-plus years:

“Healer of sick franchises.”

“Mr. Fix-It.”

“The best coach in the world” (from frequent adversary Allen Iverson, no less)

“Watching him at practice is like watching a Nobel laureate teach quantum physics.”

“Part teaching genius, part nomad.”

It is the nomad part, of course, that is most closely attached to Larry Brown, to the point of ridicule. His career arc is well established: Brown goes to a failing team, turns it around almost immediately, alienates people in the process and then abruptly leaves for the next challenge.

“The best job for Larry Brown always is the next one,” Steve Kelley wrote in the Seattle Times in 2005. “His thick coaching résumé reads like something from the Lewis and Clark expeditions … he’s fickle. He’s a serial jobseeker.”

Brown, who reportedly could join the Washington men’s basketball coaching staff, has had 16 stops in a 50-plus-year coaching career that started as an assistant under his beloved Dean Smith at Brown’s alma mater, North Carolina, in 1965. He’s coached nine NBA teams and led all but one into the playoffs; his 2003-04 Detroit Pistons won the NBA title, to go with his NCAA title at Kansas in 1988. He’s the only man with those double coups on his résumé. But Brown left both those jobs, too – and not smoothly.

Here’s what the legendary Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray wrote – in 1992, more than 30 years ago, when Brown was still in the fledgling stages of his vagabond existence:

“Larry has gone through more towns in his career than the Mississippi River. The only known photos of him are from the back. … He is like that proverbial husband who goes out for a pack of cigarettes and never comes back.”

It’s easy to see why beleaguered UW coach Mike Hopkins would be intrigued by the possibility of bringing Brown, a coach’s coach, to Montlake to be Mr. Fix-It with the Huskies. Never mind that he is 82 years old; Brown is an acknowledged virtuoso of X’s and O’s, and we all know that the Huskies desperately need an infusion of strategic magic.

Jeff Goodman of Stadium.com tweeted Monday that “all signs point to” Brown joining Hopkins’ staff at UW. Brown told the Kansas City Star that it’s “not close to being official,” but it sure seems like it’s headed in the direction of Brown joining Hopkins in some capacity – possibly as an analyst or special adviser. The two sides no doubt need to figure out whether Brown would move to Seattle and have hands-on involvement with the team, or do his work from afar via video. But his acumen would be welcome in any capacity.

The beauty of this rumored marriage between Brown and the Huskies is that none of the downside of Brown’s past should be a major concern. His propensity for leaving jobs? It’s hard to imagine that a guy who will be 83 in September is going to have wanderlust for the next opportunity. Brown had to leave his last position, as an adviser on Penny Hardaway’s University of Memphis staff, last December for health reasons – but not before Hardaway heaped praise on him for his contributions over the past two seasons.

“I’ve always wanted to be around greatness,” Hardaway said of Brown, who coached him on the Knicks. “It doesn’t mean that I didn’t know anything myself. It’s just, iron sharpens iron. … That’s why I kept fighting to get him here.”

Let’s face it – Hopkins might well not even have his Washington job if the Huskies’ athletic department didn’t have financial woes, and if they didn’t owe fired football coach Jimmy Lake $3.3 million in 2023 and $3.4 million in 2024. The prospect of taking on another buyout was too daunting, so Hopkins returns for his seventh season at UW, having not made the NCAA tourney since Year 2, 2018-19.

It’s been all downhill from there. From the rock-bottom 5-21 season in 2020-21, the Huskies have modestly rebounded to achieve mediocrity the past two years (17-15 and 16-16, respectively). But with just two years left on the six-year, $17.5 million contract he signed in 2019 after his two consecutive Pac-12 Coach of the Year seasons, the cost of buying out Hopkins is becoming less onerous – just $3.2 million remains after this season.

In other words, Hopkins really needs to win now, and perhaps Brown can help him get there. Not as much as talent on the court would help, mind you, but few are as adept at figuring out the best ways to deploy players as Brown. Among the coaches who learned at Brown’s feet and consider him a valued mentor are Gregg Popovich, Bill Self, John Calipari, Mark Turgeon, Alvin Gentry, Tim Jankovich and countless others.

He also coached with Hopkins’ Syracuse mentor, Jim Boeheim, on U.S. Olympic squads. Short of luring the retiring Boeheim to Seattle, Brown could be the next-best thing. Similar to recent years, the Huskies have gone heavily into the transfer portal for a new group of players for the 2023-24 season, including Kentucky point guard Sahvir Wheeler.

Why would Brown, at age 83, want to latch onto yet another basketball team? Because it’s in his blood. Because, according to everyone who knows Brown, he would be lost without another hoop dream. It’s why he returned to the college ranks to coach SMU at age 71 (quite successfully, until the Mustangs got hit with NCAA sanctions – another Brown staple). It’s why he took a job in Italy with Fiat Torino of Serie A at age 78 in 2018 (he was fired midseason with a 5-19 record).

“If coach Brown was driving down a lonely highway and saw 10 8-year-olds playing a pickup game on some playground off in the distance,” former North Carolina and NBA star Phil Ford told the Times’ Kelley in 2005, “he could go out there and coach that team and have just as much fun, I think, as coaching the Detroit Pistons.”

Having Brown around the Huskies could be fun for everyone – especially if he helps heal another sick program.