The Phoenix Suns should absolutely not hire Mike Brown as Head Coach
By Adam Maynes
Before I dig deeper into my more philosophical leanings as to why the Suns should avoid hiring Mike Brown as their next head coach, there is one very simple reason that should immediately outweigh all others:
He is a retread.
Should, for whatever reason, the Phoenix Suns decide to move on from current interim head coach Jay Triano after this season, their next head coach should have experience. There is no justification for hiring another no-name coach with no actual leadership experience following the disaster that was Earl Watson. This is not a roster that another head coach to learn, along with the players, on the fly.
On the contrary, they need a head coach who has the background of reaching and teaching younger players while putting together a system that is a proven winner. It has been reported locally that Suns players had moved beyond and possibly tuning out Watson’s philosophical discussions of friendship and love, and just wanted to be coached – taught how to not lose by 40+ points.
They want a coach who walks into the job knowing exactly what is expected of them and how to reach certain goals.
But to guarantee that the players will accept what the coach is teaching, the team also needs a head coach that doesn’t just have a resume of coaching, but one of being successful.
I’m sorry – while Mike Brown’s resume might include that very qualification, not only did he have LeBron James, a generational talent that would make even Earl Watson look slightly more competent, but he also only made the Finals once in LeBron’s first tenure with Cleveland, and when they got there, they never won a game.
Even with an overall sub par roster around LeBron, that team should have made the Finals more than once.
Phoenix Suns
They should have also won at least one game.
In Cleveland’s two 60+ win seasons under Brown, they never even made it out of the Eastern Conference Finals, in 2009 losing in the Conference Finals, then in 2010, losing in the Semis.
Brown was fired after that season, then after a year off, helmed Los Angeles Lakers to a 41-25 record in the lockout shortened 66 game season (the equivalent of a 51-31 record). This was good enough for third place in the Western Conference, although the season was marred by multiple issues that put Brown on the hot seat so quickly that many fans called for his firing before his first season ended.
First, the team had experienced a wealth of success under prior head coach Phil Jackson, and there was a built in expectation that the team would continue that success under Brown, who had coached LeBron and had that one Finals appearance. Unfortunately (or fortunately, from a Suns fans’ perspective), the Lakers did not experience such success, and there were obvious moments that Brown would not only lose the huddle to Kobe Bryant who would appear more apt to coaching the roster than their coach, but too his propensity to be a defensive-minded guru but not an offensive one created a situation where the players came off disjointed and out of place, and leading to his firing after a 1-4 start.
Brown was unable to translate his defensive philosophy with LeBron James and Kobe Bryant – two of the league’s best defensive superstar wings in league history – into enough wins (and no championships) to warrant retention.
Strangely enough, the Cavaliers actually did re-hire Brown in 2013, with only those final 78 games off as head coach, and led them to a nine game improvement in the standings winning 33 games.
However, the team, with budding star Kyrie Irving, was unable to capitalize on an easy schedule down the stretch in a weakening Eastern Conference, and missed the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season.
Cleveland fired Brown, re-signed LeBron James, acquired Kevin Love in a trade, and the rest is still on-going history.
He had failed to win a title with LeBron James or find success with Kobe Bryant, both of whom have multiple championships to their names.
In 2016, Golden State Warriors Head Coach Steve Kerr hired Brown as his lead assistant, a situation that he was able to take great advantage of and succeed tremendously in when Kerr was unable to coach due to back surgery, including the majority of an unprecedented and undefeated 15 game playoff run.
Though he did not change the system running Kerr’s offense and defense in the head coach’s absence, the winning put Brown in a new light as the kind of leader who might be able to win with superstar talent, and do so at a very good clip.
This is a mirage.
Phoenix Suns fans should not allow themselves to be fooled. Not only is this current Golden State Warriors arguably the greatest team ever assembled, but the system that they run is not Brown’s. That’s not to say that Brown too couldn’t too have won championships with these players had he somehow originally been hired instead of Kerr, but the fact of the matter is, his success in the bay was built entirely on Kerr’s foundation so it should absolutely not be seen as a renaissance in Mike Brown’s leadership or abilities, but instead a substitute coach who simply followed the directions that were left behind.
The Suns are currently getting the new direction in coaching that they need from Jay Traino. Three games into his tenure and while they don’t look like world beaters, they do look like an entirely different team than they did under Earl Watson.
Next: The Phoenix Suns should pursue Mike Brown as next Head Coach
The question of whether they improve significantly warranting a Triano extension or not is still 76 games away from being answered. Many fans believe that regardless of Triano’s record, General Manager Ryan McDonough should interview several other coaches from the outside to not only compare them to Traino but get multiple outsider’s views of the franchise as well.
Hopefully this does happen, and the mistake of not interviewing any other options and re-upping the interim without competition is not repeated.