ATHENS – Larry Brown’s chief lieutenant, Gregg Popovich, was running interference for his boss, trying to deflect a barrage of bullets, spinning like a basketball Stephanopoulos.
“Whenever we lose in America, we look for someone to hang,” Popovich said. “And I think that’s pretty childish, frankly.”
“Instead of knocking our guys or our league,” Brown himself had droned a few minutes earlier, “we should place the praise where it belongs – on our opponents.”
Sorry, Larry. The time for such egalitarian talk was last week, when you were bashing your players, your bosses at USA Basketball and the very notion of America’s basketball culture to anyone within earshot.
Brown knew from the start he would be in trouble with this team, that he was overmatched finding ways to get them turned around. He tried to set himself up with a nifty escape hatch when the inevitable arrived, as it did last night, this 89-81 humbling by Argentina.
He tried to get the world to see that he was merely a victim of circumstance. Only the world stopped buying into that long ago.
David Stern was one most interested observer yesterday, and it was obvious to anyone within the sound of his voice that he wasn’t happy with what he’d seen.
“This is a roster that 30 NBA teams would love to have,” Stern said, and it didn’t take a decoder ring to figure out the target of that message. Nor did he leave much doubt about his feelings for Brown’s free-form critiques of his players from a week ago.
“You know, I think it’s fair to say sometimes the traditional ways to motivate a team don’t necessarily play out quite as well when you’re in an international setting, and I’ll leave it at that,” Stern said.
But Stern didn’t leave it at that. He wanted to make sure everyone understood that Larry Brown hadn’t been forced a spoonful of unsavory medicine when he was given this roster.
“This was a team that was put together, by everyone, including the coaching staff,” Stern said. “This is a great team. I don’t buy the, ‘Well, I’d like to have this, I’d like to have that.’ ”
If Stern was an NBA general manager, we’d already be starting a Brown Watch. Which is not only true, it is fair, because it happens every time the U.S. experiences one of these seminal implosions at the Olympics.
Henry Iba went to his grave absorbing criticism for keeping the parking brake on his ’72 Olympians. The specter of 1988 still haunts John Thompson, as it should, for his collection of road runners who couldn’t shoot straight.
So must this all fall on Brown, despite his henchmen’s pleas. Let Allen Iverson, captain of the team that behaved much better than the coach across all two weeks, explain it for you.
When someone asked how difficult it is to impose team chemistry on a team that barely knows each other before the Games begin, Iverson said: “I don’t want to make that excuse for us. I think the time we had, it was already known that’s how much time we were going to have. . . . Was it enough time? I don’t know. But we knew we had to get it done in that time. And that’s not any excuse we could use.”
Unless you’re the coach, that is. Iverson went on to speak eloquently about how much of an honor it is to play for his country, said there would be no worries about the U.S. showing up to play for the bronze tonight.
“If you don’t get it done the way that you expected to,” the captain said, “I think it’s important for you to get it done the best way you can.”
Words to live by for the captain. Too bad the coach never heard them.