After the Orlando Magic completed their sweep of the Charlotte Bobcats yesterday, all eyes turned to Charlotte's coach, the brilliant, often enigmatic Larry Brown -- would he stay on as the leader of Michael Jordan's team, or were the rumors that he wanted to return to Philadelphia true? Brown responded in typical Larry Brown fashion:

"A reporter asked Brown about the [Philadelphia] report after the game. 'I'm not coaching anywhere but Charlotte,' Brown said. 'Now am I going to go home and talk to my wife and kids? I'll be 70 years old and I've got two young kids. Am I going to talk to them and find out what I need to do, and am I going to talk to Michael? Absolutely. But I'm not coaching anywhere but for Michael Jordan if he wants me and if I can work it out with my family.'

Of course, Brown didn't rule out taking on a team presidency with that statement. When asked if he would consider an executive role for a team other than Charlotte, Brown responded, 'That's hypothetical.'"

But whatever happens in the latest installment of the Larry Brown coaching carousel, you have to acknowledge that he has had one of the best and most unique careers of anyone associated with the game of basketball. In fact, it's been so successful & interesting that I want to map out Brown's entire career since his freshman year of college and see how many wins he has been involved in. To do this, I'll turn to a method I used here, which estimates the W-L record of the team in games the player played. Here's L.B.'s total resume, dating back to 1960:

Aside from his season on the Freshman team at North Carolina (in those days, freshmen weren't allowed to play Division I varsity basketball) and his 2 seasons with the Akron Goodyear Wingfoots of the National AAU Basketball League, I estimate that Brown has been a part of 1,940 wins as a college/pro player/coach, including 171 in the playoffs. Is that a record? My guess is that Don Nelson has him beat, but not by much (come to think of it, I should do one of these for Nellie as well)... Either way, though, it's been an impressive career for Larry Brown, especially when you consider that he's made 21 stops along the way. The only question now is, will he be coaching at #22 next fall?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 at 8:37 pm and is filed under Coaches, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.