NEW YORK(AP) Knicks coach Larry Brown checked into a Memphis hospital complaining of chest pains earlier this week, but was released two hours later after being diagnosed with indigestion, according to published reports Friday.

Brown, 65, was examined by doctors Tuesday night and released two hours later, the New York Daily News reported. Both the Daily News and New York Post said, according to sources, it was nothing more than indigestion.

The Knicks' medical staff arranged for Brown to meet with doctors at the hospital as a precaution, the Daily News reported.

New York, in Memphis to play the Grizzlies the following night, lost 101-99 on Pau Gasol's late jumper. It was New York's 21st loss in 23 games, and at 15-42, the Knicks have the NBA's worst record in Brown's first season as coach.

Brown missed 17 games last season due to a hip replacement operation that led to a bladder problem which required surgery in November. He'll need additional surgery for the bladder problem, but Brown is putting that off until after the season.

The Daily News and Post both reported that the most recent health scare was not related to the bladder problems.

LOL

Did the author of this thread have an agenda?

LOL

Did the author of this thread have an agenda?

I don't see it.


Looks like the exit strategy has already been initiated.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/01/sports/basketball/01knicks.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Knicks Receive a Message From the Top: Shape Up
March 1, 2006
By LIZ ROBBINS


Rose said, "He also acknowledged the fact that you'll probably see and hear a lot of speculation about him possibly making changes with the coach staff or the front office, and he acknowledged that's not going to happen." Many of Thomas's roster moves — he has made 44 since becoming team president in December 2003 — have drawn criticism, especially the recent trades for Rose and Steve Francis. Thomas seemed to be stockpiling guards who are not defensive-minded, even though Brown said at the time that he endorsed the deals.

"You don't bring in players that can't play a style that's comfortable for the coach," Brown said after practice. "Isiah and I understand that. He knows the guys I like — it's not easy to make trades."

With the deadline having passed to make trades, Brown added: "The important thing is to get the most out of these guys and see if they can play the way I feel comfortable coaching — if they want me to coach."

By throwing out such a curious aside, Brown, who still has $40 million and 4 years left on his contract, may be sensing that he is losing his players. But then again, maybe he wants to lose them.

"We got to have guys who are defensive-minded, have a high basketball I.Q., play unselfish and play hard," he said. "The way I look at it, maybe some of them can't do what I ask."

http://wtfdetroit.com/viewtopic.php?p=25823#25823

I think any coach with a record like the Knicks have right now would have to be braced for a short term stay. I mean, how could you speak with confidence that you'll be there even a year or two from now if you are LB?

Of course, every word that he says from now on is going to be nitpicked and over analyzed, so carry on.

He's gonna have to stay there at least one more year.

There's no chance in hell he'd be able to pull a 17 million dollar in one year magic job switcharoo two years in a row.

If he considered quitting, and put out feelers to other teams like he did before he left Detroit, he'd quickly find out that instead of other teams falling all over themselves to pay him $10 mil per year, those same teams now know better than to throw crazy money at him hoping he'll turn their team around when he couldn't do it in New York, and in fact made them worse than before he arrived.

In other words, while he's still a HOF'er and all that, he lost all the luster he gained after winning a title in Detroit. He's no longer a hot commodity, IMO.

Please Glenn, not even you can deny bolded size 24 font.

I don't deny that you emphasized it by putting it in 24 point bold type. lol

I think he's saying that they could fire him anytime they want to, it's their prerogative, especially with the Knicks record.

I don't think that anyone can say that it is 100% out of the question, especially with Dolan's man-love for Isiah. If one of them has to go (Zeke or LB) it really is anybody's guess who it would be.

"if they want me to coach"

Man do I love LB...

Are we on suicide watch, here?

please. this dude went to the hospital for a tummy ache, that's pathetic.

He dropped these same lines in Detroit. All of that if they want me to coach here nonsense is straight bullshit. LB just quit on this team already.

Larry Brown is one tough son of a bitch. It took him 50+ games of watching the Knicks to get indigestion. The Knicks gave ME indigestion after watching them for less than 30 minutes. Ruined a perfectly good Chalupa, too. Those bastards.

I hope he's still enjoying that dream job.

LOL@giffman

The worst part is that after knowing all of LB's past problems Isiah still signed him to a five year contract. Fucking crazy.

The question is how does a hall of fame coach either get fired from every job or quit every job?


if they want me to coach

you're in the HOF right? yet nobody wants you? what does that say?

It tells me that either he doesn't really belong in the hall of fame, or he just doesn't try to really coach anymore. The thing is that if he isn't trying that's even worse to me, and a bigger reason for him not to be in the hall. It's a disgrace to the game.

Um, maybe.

Or maybe he realizes that the owner can fire the coach anytime he wants to.

Apologist.

Um, maybe.

Or maybe he realizes that the owner can fire the coach anytime he wants to.


Has there ever been a hall of famer that gets fired so frequently?

Hall of Famers should not get fired. They are HALL OF FAMERS!

He just leaves. I don't think he's ever been fired except in Detroit.

Larry Brown said he was fired in San Antonio, while the owner said otherwise(IIRC). It's pretty much up in the air what really happened in San Antonio....

He left his 3243555 other jobs.

Larry Brown really changed after he won the title in Detroit.

He was EXCELLENT in his first year here. I know he inherited a great team, but they were weak mentally. They had gotten beaten up by the Nets and Celtics in the playoffs in years before that and put up poor performances against other teams like the Raptors and Magic. They also let injuries be used as excuses. Larry Brown came here and made them tough. I give Sheed credit too, but Larry was also GREAT. He came here, won a ring when no one except PistonsDynasty really EXPECTED it to happen.

But after that, something changed.

He took over the Olympic team and won them the Bronze medal. You can put blame on the players all you want. But the fact of the matter is that Larry Brown tried to change the ways these guys played to fit his system, in 2 weeks. There couldn't have been a worse coach to do this job. Ego got in the way. He couldn't step aside and let the players play. He also glued guys like Amare Stoudamire, LeBron James, and Dwyane Wade to the bench, while playing guys like Lamar Odom and Stephon Marbury.

In his second year in Detroit, the players clearly carried him. He missed 16 games due to injury, he hinted of retiring the whole year, and he flirted with other teams during the end of the season (could have been Tom Wilson though). I also thought he played the starters way too much and costed them the legs to pull out game 7 in San Antonio. That series should have been one in 5 or 6 than lost in 7.

So, I think Larry won us a Championship his first year, but lost us a Championship in his second year.

Then this year he goes to New York and pulls one of the worst coaching jobs in recent memory, by ANY coach. The man has taken a relatively talented roster, and put together 35 different starting lineups. He is just throwing players out there and hoping something happens. Sometimes, 12 players play in a game. They are not only losing, but getting DESTROYED now. The players have lost all confidence in Larry and he will have a tough treck getting that thing turned around.

http://www.nypost.com/sports/knicks/64630.htm


LARRY WON'T 'WALK AWAY'
By MARC BERMAN

Larry Brown called his brief hospital visit in Memphis on Tuesday night for indigestion a "non-issue," but next month's medical issue facing the Knicks coach will have a great impact on his future.

Brown was diagnosed with indigestion earlier this week after experiencing a rapid heartbeat. Brown joked, "It was the indigestion of losing."

Next month is no laughing matter. When the Knicks end their regular season April 19, missing the playoffs for the fourth time in five years, Brown will enter the hospital for a planned procedure to try one last time to correct his bladder disorder.

There is fear that Brown, 65, eventually will use his health as an excuse to abandon Team Titanic. But Brown said even if the procedure is a failure, "I'm not going to walk away from doing this." Of course, Brown's words always should be taken with a grain of salt.

Brown said he will undergo a procedure in the days following the regular-season finale. Using a catheter, it's Brown's last hope of returning to a normal lifestyle.

"If it's not resolved, I'll live this way the rest of my life and I'll do it," Brown said. "It's not going to keep me from coaching. If I had my druthers, I'd like to see it handled. I have confidence it will get better. If it doesn't, other people have lived their lives with various things. It's nothing that will keep me from coaching right now."

Brown's bladder problems stemmed from hip surgery in November 2004.

Of next month's procedure, Brown said, "I'm confident it will work out. I've learned to live with it. I don't enjoy it. I'm OK to do my job."

Concerning his recent checkup, he said team doctor Lisa Callahan made him go to another doctor after Brown felt an accelerated heart beat on the plane from San Antonio to Memphis. He denied he had chest pains.

"I didn't want to go," Brown said. "But I listened to her. I have an athletic heart. Sometimes it beats crazy. That's been my whole life."

http://www.nypost.com/sports/knicks/64630.htm


LARRY WON'T 'WALK AWAY'
By MARC BERMAN

Larry Brown called his brief hospital visit in Memphis on Tuesday night for indigestion a "non-issue," but next month's medical issue facing the Knicks coach will have a great impact on his future.

Brown was diagnosed with indigestion earlier this week after experiencing a rapid heartbeat. Brown joked, "It was the indigestion of losing."

Next month is no laughing matter. When the Knicks end their regular season April 19, missing the playoffs for the fourth time in five years, Brown will enter the hospital for a planned procedure to try one last time to correct his bladder disorder.

There is fear that Brown, 65, eventually will use his health as an excuse to abandon Team Titanic. But Brown said even if the procedure is a failure, "I'm not going to walk away from doing this." Of course, Brown's words always should be taken with a grain of salt.

Brown said he will undergo a procedure in the days following the regular-season finale. Using a catheter, it's Brown's last hope of returning to a normal lifestyle.

"If it's not resolved, I'll live this way the rest of my life and I'll do it," Brown said. "It's not going to keep me from coaching. If I had my druthers, I'd like to see it handled. I have confidence it will get better. If it doesn't, other people have lived their lives with various things. It's nothing that will keep me from coaching right now."

Brown's bladder problems stemmed from hip surgery in November 2004.

Of next month's procedure, Brown said, "I'm confident it will work out. I've learned to live with it. I don't enjoy it. I'm OK to do my job."

Concerning his recent checkup, he said team doctor Lisa Callahan made him go to another doctor after Brown felt an accelerated heart beat on the plane from San Antonio to Memphis. He denied he had chest pains.

"I didn't want to go," Brown said. "But I listened to her. I have an athletic heart. Sometimes it beats crazy. That's been my whole life."


Apologist

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/story/396831p-336367c.html


How can this happen?

Only at Garden could Isiah & Steph outlast Larry

By Mike Lupica

Maybe the old system of player contracts in the National Football League is dying in front of our eyes along with the league's old collective bargaining agreement. But if basketball operated like football, and players weren't guaranteed money and jobs forever, a player like Stephon Marbury would be gone by now, provided the person or persons in charge had a real strategy.

When James Dolan met with Knick beat reporters the other day, as truly amazing a single media briefing as we have ever had in sports in New York, he used that word, strategy, a total of 31 times. It was as if Dolan thought that if he said "strategy" enough, the Knicks would suddenly have one.

Isiah Thomas is now moving into his third year in New York even though Dolan acts as if it is his first, and he has as much of a strategy to get the Knicks turned around as Marbury had a strategy to beat the Bulls on Friday night. There Marbury was, driving the lane at the end, running the play he wanted to run - him, to the basket - and then stopping to beef at the nearest ref because he thought he got fouled. From Coney Island on, it is all supposed to be about him. Ben Gordon ran down the court and made a three-pointer and the Knicks were going to lose again.

It wasn't the first time in the game Marbury, who wants the rock in his hands all the time, had pulled a rock like that.

Of course Friday night wasn't all Marbury's fault the way this Knick season isn't all anybody's fault. Larry Brown said yesterday, "You can't look at a team playing the way we're playing and not talk about coaching." But more and more, it becomes painfully obvious the Knicks have no chance to move forward with Marbury.

Dolan? He says, "You can't say that Stephon hasn't been a positive for the team. That's just not right."

Anybody else who wanted Marbury admits they were wrong now. Not the owner of the Knicks, certainly not Isiah Thomas. He's not wrong. Whatever he says in public, he still thinks he is right about these players and believes the Knicks should have a much better record than they do.

There is absolutely no question that Thomas has gotten Dolan to buy into this. It is why this is on the owner as much as his general manager from now on. If the Knicks can't even get to 20 victories, this will go in with the worst seasons any New York team has ever had. The 1-15 Jets of Rich Kotite. Casey Stengel's '62 Mets. Anything.

But no worries. Thomas still has Dolan's ear the way Marbury has his. Thomas has told enough people that when the Knicks were winning some games earlier in the season, they were doing it by outscoring people. So you have to wonder if he thinks Brown is holding everybody back the way Marbury, who doesn't want to run any plays, thinks Brown is holding him back.

The coach still believes he and Thomas can work this out together, that they can get on that same page we keep hearing about. Maybe he has to believe that to get through the rest of this season, or even the rest of his contract. I sure don't.

Does Thomas want the Knicks to win? You bet he does, in the worst way. He has everything riding on this, he knows that the coach would get another job after an epic sports disaster like this, but he never will. Thomas also has to know something else, when he looks at the rest of the schedule: Things aren't going to get much better. And could even get worse.

"(Thomas) is trying," Larry Brown keeps saying. "We're all trying."

Only at the Garden, increasingly paranoid about everything basketball related, do they think the coach is the only one who has figured out what a mess he inherited. Or that anybody who knows anything about basketball would need Larry Brown to make up their minds about the '06 Knicks. Good grief. Heavy on the grief part.

Brown says he's staying. He says it to me, he says it to everybody. He never says anything different about that in private than he does in public, never suggests that he won't be here next season. Still, ask yourself something: If he gets out of this season and sees that things aren't going to change for the better, why would he want to?

Whatever he says now.

Imagine that. Imagine an ending like that. At the end of a season like this, as bad as we will ever see, Isiah Thomas and Stephon Marbury might be two of the last men standing, right next to James Dolan. And Larry Brown could be the one gone.

There's your strategy.

LB's Knicks play "the right way", for one game at least.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/story/397055p-336553c.html



Steve, not Steph, having ball

BY MITCH LAWRENCE
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

To mark his first victory as a Knick, Steve Francis was presented with the game ball Saturday night in Milwaukee. As to how many more balls are given out over the remainder of the season, your guess is as good as Larry Brown's.

No question the Knicks have been more competitive in their last three games, but having lost 22 of their last 25 overall, it's understandable that Brown is hardly gushing with optimism. That became apparent after Saturday's victory when he was asked, in all seriousness, if his 16-43 team could play .500 ball over the final 23 games.

"I don't know," Brown said. "But if we play like this, I think we'll give ourselves a chance to win some games. And I think that's all anybody in New York is asking. That's all Isiah (Thomas) wants. And all I want. Try to have some pride in the way we play. If that happens, then you take the results."

The quest for positive results continues tomorrow on the road in Indiana, against another Eastern Conference playoff team. With games against better teams like Denver, Detroit, Miami and Memphis over the next 18 days, there is no guarantee of smooth sailing.

For one thing, Brown still has his hands full with Stephon Marbury. In Milwaukee, Brown took his playmaker to task for his incredible late-game gaffe in the loss to Chicago on Friday night. Hearing that, along with the fact that Brown had revealed that he had again broken off plays in crunch time in the Bulls game, Marbury used the opportunity to go back at Brown, saying, "We're still trying to figure out what we're supposed to do on the basketball court."

Marbury made it sound as if Brown's system is akin to solving Rubik's Cube, but it's not all that complicated. From day one of training camp, Brown has stressed that he wants his point guard to distribute, first and foremost, and for his other players to share the ball. Saturday was one of the few times the Knicks actually followed through on the strategy, scoring 36 baskets off an impressive 28 assists, with Marbury finishing with 11 assists and only one turnover.

But clearly, the Knicks' efficiency and poise in the final minutes against the Bucks were aberrations. While Brown can only hope for more of the same, there are no guarantees. Plus, he plans on inserting Francis into the starting lineup and going with a strict three-guard rotation, with Jamal Crawford off the bench. Brown's reasoning is that Francis has been a starter throughout his career.

"I'm sensitive to that," the coach said.

But he has held off on moving Francis ahead of Quentin Richardson because he felt the team desperately needed to win. Once the move is made, Richardson will be used solely at small forward, which could cut into Jalen Rose's minutes. You can see where this is going. The fallout could take a toll on some players. Already, Crawford's minutes and play have declined since Francis came on board.

With his memento safely packed away for the plane ride home, Francis was just happy that he had finally won as a Knick. He says he isn't overly concerned about when he becomes a starter.

"I'm just focusing on getting more accustomed to the offense," he said. "There are still times out there where I'm kind of lost and trying to get my feet wet. I just want to be able to know what coach intends on having me learn."

It's fundamental, team-oriented basketball - not Rubik's Cube.

LOL@Marbury