Mike Brown was named the NBA Coach of the Year for 2009 in a year when many coaches were deserving. Of course, Mike Brown could give out some basketball coaching tips since his team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, racked up the best record in the NBA over the past season. After playing basketball both in the US and overseas as a youth basketball coach Brown also played college ball before being elevated to coach.
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The best coach of the year began his NBA career way back in 1992 as an assistant coach for the Denver Nuggets after graduating from the University of San Diego. After five years there under Dan Issel, former Nugget star and their coach, Brown found himself on the staff of Bernie Bickerstaff in Washington. Two years into the job, Brown shifted over to be the scout for the team. He caught a major break in 2000 when he was hired by Greg Popovich to work for the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs won a championship in 2003 and this created a big interest in Brown, who then headed to work with the Indiana Pacers and Rick Carlisle. The Pacers made the playoffs in back-to-back seasons and Brown was able to parlay that into his first head coaching position with the Cavaliers in 2005, where he is today.
At the tender age of 29, the NBA Coach of the Year is still one of the youngest in a league full of cutthroat competition from ex-players and ex-college coaches. Of course, Brown has something that none of the others have in LeBron James, the phenomenal young star who is one of the few NBA players to live up to the hype and to probably exceed even those high standards. Brown, who is known as a defensive master throughout his career, spent the first three years trying to come up with some original offense other than handing the ball to high-scoring James. In 2007, when the Cavaliers were in the Finals versus the Spurs, the offense was lethargic as the Cavs were swept in four games. In two of those games, the Cavs managed less than 80 points and they never scored more than 92.
Finally, this season it clicked as the NBA coach of the year Brown focused on offense and the Cavaliers picked up point guard Mo Williams in the summer of 2008. Brown also traveled to Europe over the summer to pick up basketball coaching tips from all forms of offense. The Cavaliers were able to leap from the 20th best offense in the league during the 2007-2008 season to fourth most productive in the 2008-2009 season. With this leap, their record left everyone else in the dust as the Cavs compiled a 66-16 regular season record, a franchise record for wins. Since his youth basketball coach Brown has had to steadily adapt his uptight demeanor to fit into the ups and downs of the basketball but these days that all seems like ancient history.