Bulls contact Larry Brown: Oh sweet God no

February 11th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

This has bad idea written all over it: the Bulls have apparently contacted Larry Brown about their head coaching position, the one Jim Boylan is doing so very little with even as we speak. Boylan’s proven himself to be nothing more than Scott Skiles without the bulldog ethos; his coaching style is every bit as disorienting, but without the edge. Bor-ing.

But Larry Brown would be even worse. Why? First, Ben Wallace aside, there are few players on the Bulls that you could sufficiently call “veterans,” and if Brown’s horrendous tenure in New York taught us anything, it’s that he basically requires veterans willing to buy in to his system. And which Bulls fit in that category? Kirk Heinrich? Luol Deng? You could count on effort from Joakim Noah, but if you put a mini-basketball and a Little Tykes hoop in front of Noah, he’d go all out. Consider Wallace a lost cause at this point; no dalliance with a former coach is going to reverse his sudden, steep decline. And don’t even get me started on what Brown would do to Tyrus Thomas.

Not to mention what Brown would do to the Bulls aesthetic value: If the Bulls are going to be just south of mediocre, and slow, and not really seem to care, it’d be a whole lot more entertaining if they didn’t do so within the confines of Brown’s slow-ass strategic crawl. I don’t need to see Heinrich walk the ball up the floor 75 times a game. I don’t need to see plodding, methodical offense, especially when the individual offensive players on the team are boring in and of themselves.

The one positive I can see in this is that maybe, just maybe, Brown would shake things up in the front office. You know, force John Paxson to do something more than select successful college players year after year. Maybe publicly call for a trade or two. And while that sounds nice, at the end of the day, that’s turmoil and nothing more. The type of turmoil Brown perfected in New York, and the kind of turmoil that might get heads spinning in Chicago, but at the end of the day would probably be more hurtful than beneficial.

So, to conclude this seventh-grade book report: Larry Brown is a land of many contrasts. And if you’re a Bulls fan, you do. Not. Want.