Larry Brown

Larry Brown (Photo via AP)

Is it finally over for Hall of Fame coach Larry Brown?

If the former UNC player and assistant to Dean Smith has coached his last game in a five-decade career, what a sad way for it to end. After failing to land another head coaching or assistant’s job in college basketball and the NBA, Brown was hired last summer by the Fiat Torino Italian professional team.

Brown had a difficult language barrier with most of his players and missed almost a month of the season to return home for surgery. He was fired after a loss, his team’s 19th of the season against only five wins, and booed by the home fans of his latest team.

Brown turned 78 last September after coaching 16 college, NBA and old ABA teams. His last job stateside was at SMU, where he resigned after four years and dogged by another NCAA investigation, similar to those he encountered at UCLA and Kansas in the 1980s.

At a 50-year reunion weekend last January for the teams he assisted under Smith at Carolina, Brown said he has to be a better coach today than he was at all his other jobs because, well, he has more experience. Kind of the way that Mack Brown at 67 has to be a better coach than he was at 37 when he began his first stint at UNC.

Despite a controversy-marred career, Brown remains an iconic coach and the only man to win an NCAA championship (Kansas in 1988) and an NBA title (Detroit Pistons in 2004). He has a total of 1,593 victories in college, where he had a .731 winning percentage, and the pros, where he won 57 percent of his games rebuilding losing franchises into winners at almost every stop.

A member of both the Naismith and college Halls of Fame, Brown said he missed the smell of a gym and the competition. He keeps coaching because it’s the only thing he ever wanted to do.

With friends who love him and close colleagues throughout all levels of basketball, Brown will take his unmatched resume to the next opportunity. If this is truly the end, the game has lost what many consider to be the greatest teacher and pure coach ever.

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