Spoiler - Larry Brown is a pig

can you explain? i didnt get a chance to see it

The US played a solid - clean and pretty disciplined game. It was good basketball. Brown kept of a solid barrage of complaints to the refs all game but the players kept their cool and just played ball.

In the final seconds - yes seconds - of the game with the win in the bag. Brown called a time out seemingly just to stand around and admire the handiwork of the American team. The game was in the bag, but he seemed to want to stand around, gloat and rub some salt into the Spanish wounds. It was one of the most crass things I have ever seen a "professional" coach do at an international meet.

After the game the Spanish coach tore into him for it and the crowd was less than enthusiastic about the whole thing.

Just goes to show that sometimes even the very best can be on their very worst behavior.

Larry Brown may be a pig, I don't know. I have not seen the broadcast, but if its as you described, then maybe he did commit an error in judgement. However, Olympic Basketball as a whole owes such a great deal of "make-up" to the Americans for that debacle of a game when the Russian's cheated, with the help of the officials, and stole the Gold medal from the US in 1972. With that as the backdrop, any misdeeds by Larry Brown with respect to time-outs are very easily overlooked in my mind.

Edited by Motivated 2004-08-27 11:18 AM

from what i read, the coach calling the time out was a mistake, and he didnt notice the time left on the clock... and once he did he tried to retract the time out, but the officials wouldnt let him...so if thats true... i find nothing 'pig like' about him at all, just an honest mistake...even if he did continue to talk to the players instead of just have them stand on the court for the remainder of the time-out..

Larry Brown seems to have made a bad mistake, I find it hard to believe he called this timeout to rub it in Spain's face. During the last few weeks its been apperant that Brown has been the one guy on the team that understands the meaning of these games and of the olympic spirit. Its been a uphill battle for him to motivate the US to play will the heart you see on the court from other teams. This incident seems to me to be an honest mistake. What I can't wrap my head around is the way the crowd acted during the Mens 200M. The boos and whistles were directed at the 3 US runners because the defending champ (the first Greek to win a track event since the first modern Games) couldn't race because he failed to show up for a drug test. Talk about poor sportsmanship. Here's a great quote, "The Americans did all this so that they could win the medals," said track fan Naoum Ditsios of Kastoria, Greece.

Hmm - let me think - a coach at this level who has coached NCAA championship teams, NBA championship teams suddenly loses track of the clock in the dying seconds of a game that will decide whether or not his team gets into medal play. I would have to say that Mr. Brown is now being more economical with the truth than is plausible.

There is a big difference between misbehaving fans (who showed an incredibly poor grasp of the situation) and a professional coach who has coached at the championship level for most of his career to demonstrate such contempt for sportmanship and the olympic spirit. I can forgive fans for being jingoist and uninformed - world class coaches should be held to a better standard.

yeah, good point. maybe what he was really doing and didn't want to say was call a timeout to tell all the players on the floor, "now listen, i know we were the underdogs and just beat these guys, but please, please don't start jumping up and down after the buzzer..."

I hear ya and maybe he should have done what he did.  However after reading the comments from the coach of Spain he was just mad because he thought it would be a walk in the park.  He brought up how the US hadn't been hitting 3's (18%) and then we shoot 55% against him.  He said maybe we were sandbagging, not taking it serious ect...I don't think we were sandbagging but I do agree that we probably didn't take it serious.  We basically have a college team out there anyway who most went to the NBA early and already think their the greatest so I can see them thinking it is a walk in the park.  Plus the coach said the crowd was cheering for the better team, crowds don't cheer for the weaker teams, the crowd was all for Spain.  The fact that Spain is 5-1 and probably going to be playing for 7th or something and the US is 4-2 and probably playing for the gold.  That isn't the US's fault, I don't think we set the rules nor the brackets but why not blame US.   Same with Track and Field, the crowd was blaming the US runners in the 200 because their Greek god of sprints was banned for missing a drug test...and not for the first time either but lets let the US know we aren't happy.  We definately aren't the only athletes out there and by no means are we the greatest ones out there in many sports but we are still and probably always will be the big bad guy in international events.   Do I care what LB did?  Not really, Would I have done it probably not but if not this it would of been something else LB or the US team did.