Larry Brown is Desperate to Coach Again

It’s been over a year since Larry Brown has stalked a basketball sideline, and it’s driving the legendary coach nuts. From the NY Daily News: “The siren may be calling Brown harder, more persistently, than ever before, right now, in his 15th month of being a Hall of Fame coach without a team. ‘It’s been hard, oh man,’ Brown says. ‘I’ve been active every day of my life, doing something I love. I don’t know if it’s an emptiness, (but) it’s a heck of an adjustment.’ He smiles faintly and talks about how great it has been to be more involved with his kids, L.J., 17, and Madison, 15, to be a regular in the car-pool circuit, but doesn’t quite convince himself, or his wife, Shelly, or Jay Wright, the coach of Villanova, where Brown has been a fixture at practices and games the last two seasons. ‘He needs to coach like he needs oxygen,’ Wright says.’He needs to be part of something. It’s what drives him. He just loves it so much.’ […] Ten years after he unwittingly triggered Allen Iverson’s infamous video rant about practice, six years after he spent a miserable and dysfunctional 23-victory year with the Knicks, Larry Brown wants – needs? – to get back in the game. College? Pro? Brown is open to anybody who might want him. He has fame and fortune, the Hall of Fame plaque and enough branches of his coaching tree, friends and protégés and former players, to fill a forest. John Calipari, former Kansas assistant and current Kentucky coach? R.C. Buford, former Kansas player and current Spurs GM? Mike Woodson, former Indiana assistant and current coach on 33rd St.? The branches are everywhere, and Brown almost gets choked up when he thinks about all the interconnections, lives who have touched his, and vice versa. All that Larry Brown needs right now is a team. ‘When I look in the mirror, I know I’m 71, but I have the same knowledge of the game and love of the game as ever,’ Brown says. ‘My thirst for learning might never have been greater. I’ve got so much in my mind that I was taught and that I want to share, carrying on what I learned from Coach (Frank) McGuire, Coach Smith, coach (John) McLendon, Mr. (Henry) Iba. I want to be involved. I just want to be back in the game.’ […] ‘I’ve been so fortunate to learn from the people I’ve learned from, to be around so many great people,’ Brown says. ‘I have a desire to keep coaching and to share what I’ve been taught. I really believe I have something to offer, and that if somebody wants somebody who cares about the game, that an opportunity will present itself.’”