Larry Brown Discusses Coaching In The NBA Again

Per reports from ESPN, the Los Angeles Lakers have had internal discussions about reaching out to former Sixers coach Larry Brown for their vacant head coaching job.

The Lakers -- who have interviewed coaching veterans Byron Scott, Alvin Gentry, Lionel Hollins and Mike Dunleavy, in addition to discussions with former Lakers player and coach Kurt Rambis and ESPN analyst George Karl -- are not yet locked into one candidate. The Lakers, sources add, have also internally discussed reaching out to Scott Skiles and former NBA championship-winning coach Larry Brown, who has spent the past two seasons in the college game at SMU.

[Marc Stein and Ramona Shelburne, ESPN]

I spoke with Brown, now the head coach at SMU, this afternoon for an upcoming column about his relationship with Lewis Katz. Though Brown did not discuss the Lakers specifically, he did offer some general comments about coaching in the NBA.

"We can see the way the NBA is now," Brown told me. "If you're not really connecting with the owner, you've got no shot. I was so fortunate to be around Mr. [Ed] Snider. I look now and I think it's so simple: If the coach, the president, and the owner are all on the same page, it seems to me there's no way you can fail. I don't see that. When I look back at my life in pro sports, whenever I've been involved with an owner who cared about me and was there for me, it made it pretty easy."

Snider, of course, owned the Sixers during Brown's six years as coach. Brown's comments would seem to take on particular interest in light of the Lakers' recent struggles under Jim Buss, the franchise's owner and head of basketball operations.