NBA FINALS: BUCKS VS. SUNS

July 8, 2021

Larry Brown

David Fogel

Rick Carlisle

Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award Presentation

MARK BROUSSARD: Welcome, everyone. This is Mark Broussard from the NBA. I appreciate you joining us today. We are now joined by David Fogel, Executive Director of the National Basketball Coaches Association, and Rick Carlisle, head coach of the Indiana Pacers and President of the National Basketball Coaches Association. I will now turn it over to David.

DAVID FOGEL: Thank you, Mark. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We hope everyone is staying safe and healthy during these challenging times. Normally we would all be in Phoenix for Game 2 of the NBA Finals, but we are very excited for a second year in a row to present the 2021 Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award digitally. I am David Fogel, the Executive Director of the NBA Coaches Association. On behalf of Coaches Association President Rick Carlisle, our Executive Committee and all of our head and assistant coach members, I would like to thank Commissioner Silver, Mark Tatum, Kathy Behrens, Byron (Spruell), Kiki (VanDeWeghe), Charlie (Rosenzweig), Michael Levine, Mark Broussard and the entire NBA for all of the league support and assistance in providing this platform to honor the extraordinary achievements of our great NBA coaches.

We are especially proud of the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award, which honors the memory of Hall of Famer Chuck Daly, who over an outstanding career set a standard for integrity, competitive excellence and tireless promotion of NBA basketball. Chuck was an incredible mentor to so many coaches and players in our league, including Coach Carlisle and Coach Brown. So without further ado, I would like to turn it over to the Coaches Association president, coach Rick Carlisle. Thank you.

RICK CARLISLE: David, thank you very much. Quick note, I had a blue button-down shirt on and I saw Larry came on with a Memphis shirt. I went back and got my Pacers shirt on so I would mix into this thing a little bit better.

I would first like to recognize our Selection Committee for the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award, a group that's been together since 2009. A very special group of basketball men, very diverse group and just an amazing set of accomplishments. Billy Cunningham, Joe Dumars, Lenny Wilkens, Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, Donnie Walsh, Bernie Bickerstaff and Gregg Popovich. I would also like to recognize our past winners, beginning in 2009 with Tommy Heinsohn, who was the originator of the NBA Coaches Association, Jack Ramsey, Tex Winter, Lenny Wilkens, Pat Riley, Bill Fitch, Bernie Bickerstaff, Dick Motta, Jerry Sloan, K.C. Jones, Al Attles, Hubie Brown, Doug Moe, Frank Layden, Del Harris last year and this year Larry Brown.

Our recipient this year has one of the most decorated careers in the history of coaching. Three-time ABA All-Star as a player, a member of the 1968-69 ABA champion Oakland Oaks, three-time ABA Coach of the Year, one-time NBA Coach of the Year, a multiple medal winner in international competition, inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002 and also a member of the College Basketball Hall of Fame. Larry is the only coach in the history of our game to win both an NCAA title as a national champion and a world championship as an NBA coach. So he is has had a very, very distinguished career.

Without further ado, I would like to introduce the 2021 recipient of the Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award, Larry Brown.

LARRY BROWN: Thanks so much, Rick. I really appreciate this honor. The people you mentioned that have won it in the past, the people on the committee and Rick, your leadership with the Coaches Association, along with David, it is amazing to me.

I admired Chuck. I think a lot of us that got to coach against him not only admired his ability as a coach, but just the way he carried himself. He made, I think, the coaching profession, in my mind, even more special just because he was such a great guy.

You don't win awards like this unless you have people around you that are pretty special. I've been blessed to play for the best coaches that ever coached. I've been blessed to coach the greatest players that ever played. I've had unbelievable people sit next to me that allowed me to do what I love. I tell people all the time, I never worked a day in my life. And just being a coach, I feel so fortunate. But this is an amazing honor, as good as any I have ever had. Thank you very much.

Q. I'm from Italy, so I'm sorry if I bring you back to your experience here in Torino. What did that mean for you and what was that experience like in general?

LARRY BROWN: I learned a lot. I loved the opportunity to coach in Italy. I've had great respect for international basketball. I think if you look at the NBA game now, you see a lot of the similarities. A lot of things that are done in Europe are now part of our game. So it was a great experience.

I don't think we did as well as I would have hoped, but I wouldn't have changed that experience for anything.

Q. How do you feel getting back into coaching? We see the Memphis stuff behind you. How does it feel and what will you be doing mainly?

LARRY BROWN: Well, I hope I haven't forgotten how to coach. That's been a concern of mine. But since I've been out of coaching, I've been allowed to go watch a lot of other people coach and I've enjoyed that. I always like smelling the gym. With COVID, I think I've been on every Zoom and podcast imaginable, trying to share ideas, share the things I was taught.

But I'm so excited that Penny's (Hardaway) has given me this chance to work with young kids and hopefully have an impact on their lives on and off the court. I'm a little nervous about it, but I'm excited about it.

Q. I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about your Philadelphia stop and what it meant to coach the Sixers.

LARRY BROWN: I worked with an unbelievable staff. I had a phenomenal owner in Ed Snider. I think Philadelphia loves basketball as much as any place I've ever been. The fans are incredible. The players I coached were amazing. We didn't win a championship, but I think the 2001 team is one of the most popular teams that ever played there because of their work ethic and their culture. And we had a lot of terrific players. We had one that maybe is as good as anybody that ever played the game in Allen Iverson.

So I'm a big Philly fan. As a matter of fact, my first recruiting visit is going to be in Philadelphia on Saturday. I'm excited to get back.

Q. In coaching, you have the satisfaction of the thrill of competing. You also have the satisfaction of molding younger lives. Not that one has to take precedence over the other, but over your career what have you found most rewarding? At times has it been just competing? Has it been molding lives? How does that work for you?

LARRY BROWN: I think they work hand in hand, to be honest with you. I looked at my life, I lost my dad when I was young, and my brother and my mom and my coaches were really important people in my life. Right from the outset I wanted to be a high school coach and coach baseball, basketball and football, maybe teach American history and be like my mentors, like my coaches.

Somewhere along the line, I got sidetracked. I ended up at North Carolina. I played for Frank McGuire and Dean Smith. Coach McGuire recruited my mother, so she told me to go there. I think it was a pretty good decision. I ended up playing for two Hall of Fame coaches that impacted so many lives. You know, not only playing the game, but the way they conducted themselves.

When you receive an award like this, I think that was what Chuck Daly was all about. A coach's responsibility goes way beyond coaching kids and teaching kids. The relationships you establish are pretty incredible. When you talk about competing, I'm pretty competitive, but games really worried me. I always was concerned whether we prepared our team to meet any challenge. But I loved practice. I think that word practice might have a lot of people confused right now, but I enjoyed that the most. And that's why I'm so excited to get back into doing this and share the things I was taught.

Q. Going back to your NBA career, which is the team you are most connected to?

LARRY BROWN: Oh, I wouldn't answer that one. All of them. Some of the places I did better than others, but I'm proud of the opportunity I had.

It's a pretty special group to be an NBA coach. I think Rick can tell you that. It's an unbelievable fraternity. When you're an NBA coach, you're proud to have that opportunity because you're coaching the very best players in the world, you're competing against the very best coaches that are doing this job, and the support you get from the league and the fans is incredible.

But I'm proud of every team I ever coached. I look back on it and I feel very fortunate. One out of 30, that's a pretty special thing.

Q. Do you see any coach in today's NBA that you feel particularly connected with, someone you helped mentor and someone you feel you helped become a coach?

LARRY BROWN: No, I feel a connection to all of them. The ones I competed against and the ones that sat next to me and moved on to become head coaches. I'm watching the NBA Finals. I'm in awe of the two coaches there. I know it's not easy to get there. A lot of people say coaches have a tree; I have a forest. And I'm pretty proud of that.

Q. You talk about coaches that had an impact on you. Have you stopped to think though all the players that you have coached and the impact you've had on not just their careers but their lives?

LARRY BROWN: I think Rick can tell you this, Chuck Daly would probably tell you this: All the players you get to coach, you hope you have a relationship with. You hope you've enriched their lives, because they have given you so much. Yeah, I'm proud of what I see, the accomplishments of the kids I got to coach. Obviously, all of them didn't become head coaches or NBA players, but so many of them made a positive impact on other people's lives.

That's what happened to me. My high school coach, Bobby Gersten. Coach Smith, Coach McGuire, Alex Hannum, Babe McCarthy. I mean, Mr. (Hank) Iba, John McLendon. Those people have had such an effect on my life, and I always hoped that I could share what they taught with the people I was fortunate enough to coach. And then when you look at the people that sat next to me and the people that I coached, it's remarkable that I had that opportunity. But it only happened because people took an interest in my life and prepared me for what I wanted to do. So that makes me feel pretty proud.