Steve Jones says it. He played for Brown all the way back with the Carolina Cougars, Brown's first coaching job in the now-defunct ABA.

"His strength is, leave him alone and he'll take a bad team or an underachieving one and take it to a good level, or even a great one," said Jones, an NBA TV analyst for last night's 76ers-Detroit Pistons Game 5.

"It's when you challenge his methodology that there's conflict. Other coaches believe the best player gets the ball; Larry believes in making the extra pass, telling guys they have to get involved."

The Charlotte Bobcats will learn all of that and more. They introduced Brown yesterday as the successor to Sam Vincent, who was fired after one season. This time, Bobcats part-owner Michael Jordan, who struck out with first-timer Vincent, went for the tried and true.

Until late last week, Brown was an executive vice president with the Sixers, although he had not been around the team for nearly 3 months, lamenting that he had "no role." What he desperately wanted was one more chance to coach in the NBA, mostly so that his 23-59 record with the New York Knicks in 2005-06 wasn't the way people remembered him.

"Really, the Bobcats are a year late in what they're doing," Sixers senior adviser Sonny Hill said. "One obvious reason is, he's the very best in the business at turning teams around. And then he's from North Carolina. That's a double way for the fans there to identify with him and the team. The other thing is, with Atlanta playing the way they are, with Scott Skiles going to Milwaukee [as the coach], he makes the Eastern Conference tougher from the bottom up."

Brown is coaching his ninth team, an NBA record, three more than Kevin Loughery and Lenny Wilkens. He already owns 1,010 victories and a championship with the Pistons. He also won an NCAA championship with Kansas in 1988 and took UCLA to the title game in 1980. He spent six seasons coaching the Sixers, leading them to the Finals in 2000-01, their first appearance in the championship series since winning in 1982-83.

He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002.

"This is his ninth team, and probably his last team," said Sixers guard Kevin Ollie, who spent two seasons under Brown. "He had a passion to get back, to get away from the bad taste he had in New York.

"He pays great attention to detail. With our teams, he made everybody accountable in the way he made us practice. He wanted us to try and do things perfect every time; you're not going to do that, but he said we should try. He preached that."

Brown also is a prime reason why Maurice Cheeks became a head coach, first with the Portland Trail Blazers, now completing his third season with the Sixers.

"I don't know who really pushed me to be a head coach," Cheeks said. "I think it became [a matter of] circumstance. But he was one of the ones who kept talking about it the most."

As an assistant under Brown with the Sixers, Cheeks learned the value of what he termed "the little things."

"Not letting all the little things pass you by," he said. "If you do the little things, they take you to another level. His passion is coaching. That's what he loves to do. He's a Hall of Fame coach." *