A faint echo of the unraveling of the Indians was beginning to sound from the Cavaliers as day after day went by without a decision on Brown. Could Cavaliers general manager Danny Ferry be yoked to Brown as securely as Indians GM Mark Shapiro had been to Eric Wedge?
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Mike Brown lost his job soon after he lost his team. That was reflected by losses in his last two home playoff games by an aggregate margin of 50 points.
Coaches who do things like that are seldom asked back to try to re-connect with the players who unplugged them.
The only mystery was why it took so long.
A faint echo of the unraveling of the Indians was beginning to sound from the Cavaliers as day after day went by without a decision on Brown. Could Cavaliers general manager Danny Ferry be yoked to Brown as securely as Indians GM Mark Shapiro had been to Eric Wedge?
Wedge was Shapiro’s hand-picked manager for seven years, one of which actually included the playoffs. That postseason ended badly in an infamous collapse against Boston, too. Still, no one accused the Indians of not playing hard, just of not pitching well out of the bullpen.
Clearly, a bigger indictment can be made against Brown’s team. While Ferry inherited Brown as his coach, he had staunchly defended him in public the day after the season ended.
It turned out, of course, that the disarray in which it ended was too much to ignore.
Although the Orlando Magic have certainly been disappointing too, comparisons are not really close between their third game rout at the hands of the same Celtics and the Cavs’ fifth game fiasco. The Celtics had already broken the Magic’s spirit with two narrow victories in Orlando.
The Cavs came into the fifth game at The Quit with the series tied, 2-2. They had gone into the final quarter of the fourth game in Boston with only a two-point deficit and a legitimate chance to take control of the series.
Riding such momentum, they proceeded to embarrass themselves, their owner (who at least admitted as much), their coach, their general manager, their fans, their cheerleaders, Moondog and the game of basketball. They arranged to be outscored, 99-59, after taking an eight-point, second-quarter lead.
Front offices can never fire the whole roster, so coaches take the fall when teams go belly up like that.
Brown, however, did his part, too. He persisted in using matchup combinations against Boston that were unlikely to succeed. He was uncomfortable playing a small, quick lineup and did not try it except in desperation. It had proven successful against Boston during the regular season. He never gave it a chance to see if it would succeed against the fiery, determined Celtics of the postseason.
Trying the same failed approach repeatedly and hoping for a different result is one definition of, well, let us just call it "futility."
Brown leaves as the most successful coach in Cavaliers history, mainly because he had LeBron James on his side for most of his five seasons.
He is a nice man, whose offensive shortcomings were overstated as he delegated more of the responsibility at that end of the floor to his assistant coaches the past two years.
The defensive imprint he had made on the team was, however, similarly overstated, at least of late. A rash of regular-season injuries forced Brown to play a style of basketball in which he did not truly believe. Fitting it all back together on the fly in the playoffs was a task beyond Brown’s means, particularly since the game plan was so different with Shaquille O’Neal than without him.
There is some justice to the criticism that Ferry gave Brown mismatched parts in offensive players like O’Neal and Antawn Jamison, forcing him to play against his strength.
But what really sacked Brown, an avowed players coach, was the surrender of his players.
Many times, Brown had thanked James "for letting me coach him," and had spoken of their relationship as a "partnership." The fifth-game debacle against the Celtics — call it "LeBacle" — finished him, although the official ouster of his team required six games.
Brown was a first-time head coach. That will not suffice for his successor. Even given the dicey situation of James’ impending free agency, the two-time NBA Most Valuable Player will have input, if he desires to.
Why not? He had input in Brown’s firing.
James seems to think that, by not actually putting his fingerprints on the ax that fell on Brown, he has avoided blame for the coach’s ouster. But his lack of passion, committed effort, and focused attention during the pivotal fifth game, combined with his tone-deaf comments avoiding responsibility after it, built a case against his coach that he did not have to make more explicitly.