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Larry Brown's Last Stop?

By DBR Archives

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Larry Brown is back in college: after leaving Kansas in 1988, after winning the national title, Brown has hung around the NBA and has almost always won - at least until he took off for the next job. Now that next job is SMU.

Job hopping has really defined his career, which is unfortunate because it has obscured a brilliant basketball mind. He tried for the UNC position when the Heels hired Matt Daugherty, only to have A.D. Dick Baddour make it clear that he wouldn't be getting the job.

That and his age (71) have started to work against him. He's lucky to have the SMU job.

Yet characteristically, he was reportedly angling to get the Portland GM job and trying to use SMU's interest as leverage.

Still, the Mustangs may have gotten lucky. Brown is without question a world-class basketball mind. His problems come from somewhere else.

Unfortunately for SMU, something will likely come up and Brown's eternal unhappiness will re-emerge.  On the bright side though, at 71, he's certainly not a long-term hire.

Brown has turned to World Wide Wes to assemble a staff and will apparently start with Rod Strickland. That's really the key: while his knowledge is deep and significant, he has no real idea what recruiting is like in 2012 as opposed to 1988. He'll need a good staff even more than most coaches.

This is also worth mentioning: unless we're missing someone, Brown is the last pupil of Frank McGuire who is still coaching. Dean Smith has been gone since 1997, and Bobby Cremins called it a career this season.

Think about it: Larry Brown's takedown of Art Heyman is a huge part of the intensity of the Duke-UNC rivalry today. The guy has been around forever. It's certainly been an interesting career, and there's one more chapter - unless he has somewhere else to go.

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