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Everybody Hates Mike

The peril of coaching an icon.

By Joe P. Tone 

On a snow-blown day in February, the night before the All-Star break, the Cavaliers face a final task before they scatter toward sunshine: the San Antonio Spurs.

It's an easy night for the mic-wielding herd that covers the Cavs, because they feed on manufactured storylines, especially the three R's of sports journalism: Rematches, Reunions, and Rumors.

It was just eight months ago that the Spurs brought unwanted sobriety to a team — and a city — drunk with championship hopes. So tonight, reporters naturally focus on the Rematch. And with the trade deadline only a week away, the evening is also ripe for Rumors.

More interesting, though, are the Reunions. Of the Cavs' three heads of state, two are Spurs disciples. GM Danny Ferry and Coach Mike Brown both honed their crafts within the stealth juggernaut of San Antonio. Cavs' owner Dan Gilbert is simply smitten with the franchise, whose DNA he stripped almost strand for strand in constructing his team.

But it's Brown's relationship with Spurs coach Gregg Popovich that's most compelling. As players, neither had the talent to go pro, but they did have the hoops IQ to claw their way through the coaching ranks. In 2000, Popovich hired Brown as an assistant. "I thought it would be a good hire," Popovich says, sitting on the Spurs' bench several hours before the game. "When we did it, really quickly it became a great hire . . . It was obviously in his blood."

Popovich and Brown are separated by 20 years in age, but Brown's career so far has mirrored his old boss'. Like Brown, Popovich took his team to the playoffs in his first full season with the Spurs, and advanced to the NBA Finals in the second. That's where they separate. Popovich won his first title in that first appearance. Brown, meanwhile, was crushed last year by his mentor.

Still, at age 37, Brown seemed destined to join the ranks of Cleveland's revered, just as Popovich stands atop that perch in San Antonio. If any town could appreciate a military brat groomed by a salty Serb — a man obsessed with defense and loath to make excuses for his hodgepodge roster — you'd think Cleveland could. Here was a young, ass-busting coach, an endlessly humble man prone to readily confessing his sins. How could championship-starved Clevelanders reject him?

Somehow, we've found a way.

On radio shows, websites, and in the paper, fans and journalists have shrugged at the Cavs' defense, laughed at their offense, and suggested time and again that somewhere there exists a better coach for the team. And so Mike Brown, despite the best winning percentage of any coach in Cavs' history, lives a life where Googling himself would unveil endless rants about how he should be fired.

"It's probably my biggest disappointment in three years of running this team," Gilbert says as he rests in his arena bunker, a plush suite down the hall from the Cavs' locker room. "Mike Brown, outside of this building, should get a lot more credit than he seems to get. A lot more. It's just crazy."

The fuse started burning the moment LeBron James' name was called on Draft Day 2003. And while it fizzled briefly when he signed an extension in 2006, it's burning brightly again with his contract's expiration looming just three post-seasons away. Even if he re-signs, the fuse won't stop burning until he skips town or retires.

If any town has seen the face of sports disloyalty — Modell or Boozer ring a bell? — this one has. So it's only a matter of time, Cleveland believes, until LeBron packs up his chosen self and heads to one coast or the other.

Unless, that is, he wins rings. Not one, but a Hummer-full, enough to need a new trophy wing, maybe over by the bowling alley. He could never leave then, could he?

He could.

But this win-titles-and-he-stays thing, it's got legs. It gives Cleveland hope. But also heartburn.

"Look at the superstar guys that we had here — Albert Belle, Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome. All the guys that were great left this town," says Tony Rizzo, a morning host on WKNR radio. "It's a Cleveland paranoia. And rightfully so."

This was already true in 2005, when it came time to choose a new coach after the unceremonious whacking of Paul Silas. There was no time for the business-school drivel incumbent in franchise-building, the usual talk of creating a "culture" or a "philosophy." There was only time for winning.

But here's the thing about Gilbert: He's a builder, a culture guy. He toiled his way to the top, from delivering pizzas by bike to brokering deals by private jet. And he saw himself not in Flip Saunders, the fan and media favorite, but in an unknown assistant in Indiana.

"I've probably interviewed thousands of people," Gilbert says. "Usually, a person doesn't appear to have every tool. [Brown] is one of these guys that literally, you sit down with him, you can feel the integrity, the character, the confidence, the humbleness . . . It just all came."

Gilbert introduced Brown as the Cavaliers' new coach on June 2, 2005. The second-guessing had already begun.

"Excuse me, but as Peggy Lee sang: 'Is that all there is?'" wrote Plain Dealer columnist Bill Livingston. "No Zen Master, Phil Jackson? No local guy with superstars, Flip Saunders? . . . Maybe Mike Brown will be fine. He better be. Otherwise, kiss LeBron goodbye."

It was a quintessentially Cleveland sentiment: The coming of something new was sure to portend tragedy. So as Brown shaped a mismatched roster into a perennial playoff team, the chorus of Is that all there is? barely softened. As one blogger wrote on cleveland.com: "Mike Brown is the most successful coach in Cavaliers history. So I say we pat him on the back, tell him nice job, and send him on his way."

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