I love Larry Brown to this day, and am still a little disappointed that things worked out the way they did. However, I am comforted by the fact that LB just isn’t as great as I thought he was, even though he still has a pedigree to die for.

If he was great, he couldn’t have flirted with NY, and wouldn’t be looking for new challenges. In this sense Larry Brown is a classic loser, a person that can’t deal with success, and can’t see the real challenges in basketball, a game he claims to know well.

The Pistons don’t get a free pass, but they get the chance to pursue the ultimate challenge that is lost on a myopic Larry (one championship/one trick pony) Brown.

Red understood it, Daddy Rich knew it, and Phil Jackson embraced it as well. True greatness isn’t winning one championship, it’s not putting your foot on the throat of a fractured Laker team, it’s putting your foot on the throat of the NBA, on the throat of an era.

That’s a real challenge, that’s the pursuit of true greatness. And that’s quite a long distance from coaching the New York Knicks to a playoff berth. What kind of loser throws all that away chasing a piece of figurative tail(his hometown team)?

Yeah, the Pistons lose in this deal, but in my opinion, Larry Brown is the biggest loser of all. Oddly enough, I’ll still be rooting for him and his Knicks all season, because I liked him before he came here, and I still do, but I’m not blind.

I wonder how much money factored into it. If you factor in his Piston buyout he will get 62 mil over the next 5 years ( minus agents cost). 18 mil this year alone.

I don't know that championships are what Larry is all about. I think he is motivated by taking a chaotic or underacheiving team and molding it in his image. I think if Larry can somehow pull the Knicks together this year and get into the playoffs...maybe win a couple of games he will be happier than if he stayed in Detroit and won a championship.

If he pulls the Knicks together the credit goes mostly to him...at this point if he would have stayed in Detroit the players are taking a lot of the spotlight.

Pistons are the biggest loser in this deal. They lost a Hall of Fame coach...but Larry has just what he wants.

Larry gets to coach in New York, his "dream job." The Pistons get a hungry coach who will develop the bench but yet they still retain some LB principles on D. It's a win-win situation.

Agree with the second part of what you said, if LB can get the Knicks to play his way and make it to the playoffs, he'll be happier than if he repeated in Detroit. But, I think his motivation is control and being wanted. He had very little of that in Detroit the second season.

Now, in NY, every player is kissing his butt, the media is kissing his butt, and he can do whatever he wants to. And Larry is happy.

BTW, McCoskey may say we shouldn't boo Larry, but you guys should know, every chance he gets, he makes some passive/aggressive comment about how he wanted to be in Detroit, but got fired, about how he's glad to be from the stress of Detroit, and how he finally has young guys that want to learn. Did ya hear that Darko?

Some people can take the pressure of being #1 for a long time, some people can't. Some guys just like getting something started, and don't have the need to do what Phil & the Bulls, the Lakers, the Celtics, and other dynasties did.

I think it's fine to be a starter and not a finisher, because it takes all personalities, and all starters are not finishers. Phil isn't really a starter in the classic sense, he looks for the pieces to be in place, and then he excels in making them work. Red was both a starter and a strong finisher.

But LB isn't really a starter, and definetly not a finisher, he's a corporate fixer. Coming in when all looks lost, and making things better, generally at the cost of the future, but good enough to sell to a client.

I think we have to draw the line at saying that his behavior being either good or bad, it just is what it is. Joe and Mr. D, just decided to move on... LB too.

No losers here folks. We got a title, came within seconds of two, have the NBA's respect, matured some players and have this spanking new Pistons Forum cause of it all.

Coach Browns back in NY where he gets to likely end his career in his hometown. We get a solid Coach in Saunders that might hang his hat for a decade.

Forget the drama, it was a two sided dog & pony show for the masses. The dog & pony players knew it for it was, a culminating act of business.
Nuff said..

Ya can't live in yesterday when tomorrows staring you in the face and todays hanging on your back like the organ grinders monkey.

Let the games begin, 2006 is the year of the Piston.. GO PISTONS

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"Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down"...Jimmy Durante

There is a manifest and a latent reason for everything. While some argue that the manifest reason Larry left: money, a new challenge; there's a latent reason as well: his inability to deal with the everyday challenges, his weakness in the ability to compete every year without having to break down and start all over again.

Larry tried last year to repeat and could not do it. If we had won: I have a feeling that things would be a lot different and maybe he may still be on the team? With the loss came the collapse of the belief in Larry Brown as a saviour but more of a distraction. One that needed to disappear.

Larry Brown is a teacher of the game and the Pistons got what they needed from him. What differentiates Brown to someone like Phil Jackson is the an underlying competitive drive to win. Brown doesn't care as much about winning as long as his players show improvement and grow. Jackson was a winner but he still had that ability to grow his players.

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That's pure hooey.

I would recommend looking at the entire career, the impact he had when ABA franchises transitioned to the NBA and the number of personnel currently in the league that he helped develop (yep, not just players) before you make a statement that he is just a quick fix artist.

No, he's not a starter. No, he's not a finisher. The more I read up on his background, he's one of the most important characters professional basketball has had in the last 25 years. Like any great character, he's got eccentricities, a tremendous ego, insecurity (what drives us at times) and has been both the hero and villain at points in his career.

Just because some fans do not like him, doesn't negate his impact. And if you do the research, his impact on the game has been tremendous.

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Nov 13 LW Milan Lucic had an active night. He scored his first goal in eight games since his Oct. 25 hat trick and also pounded Michael Komisarek in a third-period fight. Lucic cut his hand in a fight with Michael Komisarek. "I'll be fine," he said. "(X-rays are) negative, but there's so many broken bones in there from before you can't really tell."

The thing that puzzled me then, and kind of makes sense now, is how dead Larry was right after winning the title. He looked so subdued and wrung-out, like he'd just come from a funeral instead of a cakewalk to the NBA championship.

I don't know if it's the winning, the being in Detroit or just the suddenness of going all the way in his first year ... but there was some inner need that wasn't being met there. People have always speculated about what it is, but the bottom line is this guy doesn't tick quite like anyone else.