Legendary Larry Brown names one frustration he sees in modern coaching / News - Basketnews.com

Larry Brown thinks the modern coaches don't do enough basketball-specific work and instead focus on playing the prospects right away. He thinks the analytics don't take certain things into consideration when dictating the new way of playing basketball.

Credit: AP - Scanpix Credit AP - Scanpix

Larry Brown is one of the NBA coaching greats. With an NBA Championship on his resume, he's 6th all-time in games coached and 8th all-time in wins.

Having last coached an NBA franchise 13 years ago, Brown was recently more involved in college basketball in an advisory role. Nevertheless, he decided to discuss the ongoing matters on the Takeoff with John Clark show on NBC Sports Philadelphia.

When he was asked to comment about Joel Embiid being disappointed in head coach Doc Rivers getting fired, the legendary specialist decided to talk about the current state of basketball in the league.

"I'm an old-school guy, I think you have to throw the ball inside, you have to flatten the defense out, you have to get to the free-throw line. I'm not an analytics-driven guy. I did analytics when I was 14 years old - I knew a good shot and a bad shot, I knew the best players had to take the most shots, I knew that if you outrebounded the team, got to the free-throw line more than the team, took care of the ball, took great shots, you had a chance to win," he began.

"The biggest thing - if you're struggling offensively and if you have the ability to stop other people, you're gonna always have a chance to win," Brown explained. "The way I look at the game now, it's three-point-driven. Everybody stands out on the three-point line, spreads you out, takes a three or a two, and I never understand why people aren't talking about if you got Joel in foul trouble, where is he gonna be? His ass is gonna be sitting on the bench."

Brown then remembered the times when he was coaching Allen Iverson in the Philadelphia 76ers, and compared Embiid with AI.

"If you run him 94 feet every possession, where is he gonna be at halftime? How effective is he gonna be? To me, I watched them this year, I think he got into a much better shape, which I think is critical when you get older, especially with big people. In my way of thinking, great players make other players around them better, and simply by his presence, he does that. We had Allen [Iverson], and Allen wasn't a down-low player but he got to the free-throw line, he broke defenses down," Brown recalled. "He was a threat, and because he was a threat, he made everybody around him better."

"I think if you throw the ball to Joel Embiid, in my mind, on the block, he's gonna create interest from everybody, he's gonna make everybody around him better," he explained. "I don't know how you can guard him one-on-one. When he shoots a three, in my mind, is he on the board? Does he have the ability to get back? He's great, and I'm sure Doc knows Joel Embiid better than I do. I'm just that old-school kind of coach - get fouled, get to the free-throw line, share the ball, defend your ass off, rebound the ball, get back on the fast break."

As a coaching veteran, Brown sees one fatal flaw in the current methodology - there is not enough pure basketball work, he says. According to him, modern talent would develop much more if the way they practice changed.

"The more practices that I go see, less people do basketball-specific drills. They have guys shooting threes, anybody shoots a three, they don't even rebound their own ball, they don't do drills, in my mind, to make kids better. We have all these workout coaches, these performance coaches, I want to see basketball coaches teaching kids how to play," he said. "That's my frustration. The kids are more talented, more athletic but they're also younger and less experienced. With social media and the people around them demanding that they play right away, that to me is a difficult thing for a coach to navigate."

Later on, Brown got back to the topic of analytics. Even though he admitted that it might be the reason he's no longer in the NBA, the legendary specialist gave his take on the basketball that's being played now.

"Probably the reason I'm not coaching is [that] I'm old-school. I've always felt with all the analytics stuff - it's not an equal-opportunity sport. All my teams, they didn't shoot a lot of three-pointers but they shot high-percentage three-point shots, and the better three-point shooters shot. We tried to get to the free-throw line, we tried to get fouled," he recalled.

"If you get to the free-throw line on a shot, what kind of shot are you generally shooting? A pretty high-percentage shot," Brown said. "You have a better chance to rebound it and a much better chance to stop the break. The NBA is predicated on getting out in transition and taking quick shots before the defense gets set. They don't ever look at the analytics what happens when you take a quick three and a bad three, how does that affect your team? They don't do a lot of analytics on that."

Full interview with Larry Brown:

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