Larry Brown, the new coach of the Indiana Pacers, hopes his fifth NBA stop is his last.
Of course, he admits, he's said that before."I've never had a bad job. I've never gone into a job that was in the greatest shape in the world, but I always felt I left it in better shape than when I got there," said Brown, hired to a multiyear contract with the Pacers on Monday.
"I would really like to find a permanent place, and if you're going to be a basketball coach, I don't think you could find a better state or a better situation than being in Indiana," said Brown, who recently quit as coach of the Los Angeles Clippers.
Brown, 52, rejoins Pacers president Donnie Walsh, his former college teammate at North Carolina, and vice president George Irvine, his teammate in the old American Basketball Association. Both Walsh and Irvine also were assistants to Brown at Denver.
"I didn't really look at the personnel when I thought about coming here," Brown said of the Pacers, 41-41 last season and beaten in the first round of playoffs for the fourth straight year.
"I looked at a lot of things. I looked at Donnie and George and my relationship with them and the confidence in their ability I have. I looked at ownership, and I looked at the interest in basketball in this area.
"Above all, I know what basketball means to this state and this area, and I want people to be proud of us like they're proud of the great colleges and high schools around here."
Brown, whose longest job with any NBA team has been three years, also coached at New Jersey and San Antonio. Before that, he played and coached in the ABA and later coached at UCLA and Kansas, where his 1988 team won the NCAA championship. He compiled a 434-342 record in the NBA, including 41-41 last season before the Clippers were eliminated by Houston in the first round of the playoffs.
Brown had only one losing season in his 14 years as coach in the ABA and NBA, a 21-61 record in his first season at San Antonio in 1988-89. The next year, with the arrival of David Robinson from the Navy, Brown led San Antonio to a 56-26 record and the Midwest Division championship.
The 35-game turnaround was the biggest swing in NBA history.
"This franchise has had some tough blows," he said. "But I think we're going in the right direction. I'm just hopeful these guys know we're going to try our best to teach and improve.
"I like to win," Brown said. "The biggest thing to me is you've got to put a team on the floor that's comfortable doing the things you ask them to do. You win in this league playing hard every night, defending and rebounding the ball.
"I've always been pretty demanding as a coach, but I think every time I've ever been with a team that has succeeded, we've been real unselfish, we've played hard and we've defended pretty well. I'm confident this team can do that. That's going to be our No. 1 priority."
Brown said he had not decided which Pacers assistants, if any, would be kept, or which player moves might be coming.
"It's obvious you can't stand pat and be successful," he said.