Larry Brown is a joyless old bastard

Yes and Yes.

He's a basketball legend (and read Loose Balls for some really good early Larry Brown stories) but he's just so miserable, looking with that sad clown look and whining that whiney whining of his. Even when he won the title last year he looked like his dog got ran over. During the Olympics there was this article by Adrian Wojnarowski which was a must-read, and his reaction to the Pistons/Pacers brawl was beyond melodrama, constantly telling anyone who would listen "I don't know what's with these jerks, I'm just their coach and I'm soooo sad and hoowww could this happpen, and I don't know if I can ever get up in the morning let alone coach again" and gobbling up any media appearance for his sad-sack tale.

Almost makes me want to root against the Pistons, although seeing his jerk-pantheon mate Alonzo Mourning on the other side quells that thought.

Hey, the basketball is great, so few complaints. I'm just preemptively gagging at the 'Where's Larry gonna coach?' coverage, sure to hit monitors around the country all summer long. 

Update: I seriously wrote mine before I read this, but again: Yes.

Non-playoff thoughts

Congrats to the Bucks fans out there for winning the lottery. I regretfully missed it, and I sincerely mean 'regret' since it is usually a great source of unintentional comedy. But I feel similar thoughts to those at Les Bullez:

how nice is it that we won’t be seeing Wes Unseld, or MJ, or Honest Abe Pollin, or Ledell Eackles, or Kenny “Sky” Walker sitting at a table hoping for a lucky ping pong ball tonight at the NBA Draft Lottery.

Replace those names with BJ Armstrong, Jerry Krause, and Jerry Krause's lucky pennies, and it makes the playoff appearance seem that much sweeter.

As for the Bucks, just today I discovered a new Bucks-centric blog, The Mecca. While this isn't a top-heavy draft, 1st is better than...not having 1st, I guess. Despite the Bulls not having any draft picks, there will be draft coverage here at Bulls Blog, don't you fret.
 

Other news around the association was the dealings in Orlando, with the hiring of new (old?) coach Brian Hill immediately following the resignation of GM John Weisbrod. The timing of those two moves can't be coincidental. TJ at Orlando Magic Fan (and another OG of basketball blogging) is on it, and wishes it was Weisbrod who was staying after this apparent power-play, commending Weisbrod's handling of the Tracy McGrady trade.

I think that Weisbrod made some good moves, drafting Josh Howard being chief of those, but also had the disastrous move of getting Doug Christie (plus his crazy wife) which correlated with (and perhaps caused) a 2nd half collapse. Giving away Anderson Varejao isn't looking too good either. But TJ does make a good case in wishing that Weisbrod was staying.
 

Rising Suns, mentioned in last week's carnival as one of my new favorite NBA blogs, has moved to the Most Valuable Network. I'm especially happy for Brent's new address since his old blogspot template was ugly. My overall opinion of MVN is lukewarm, but I do like when they 'aquire' writers that have already established a blog. While its nice to get a writer who submits a quality sample (or whatever the test is, the real test is consistency.
 

Says the guy who has been MIA for nearly a week :-)