Best friends Brown and Popovich foes in NBA Finals

SAN ANTONIO — Off the court, there seems to be little basis for a close friendship, no rational explanation for how Larry Brown and Gregg Popovich have formed one of the tightest, long-lasting bonds in the NBA.

Brown, 64, is the game's most famous wanderer, a guy who has been married three times and changes jobs more frequently than most people change cars. Basketball has been his one constant: He grew up playing it and has never held a job outside the profession.

Popovich, 56, by comparison, is the straight arrow. A graduate of the Air Force Academy, he has a degree in Soviet studies, speaks Russian and worked in USAF intelligence. He's been married to the same woman for three decades. And, except for a stint with the Warriors from 1992-94, he has worked for the same organization, the Spurs, since 1988.

Yet as his defending champion Pistons prepared to open the Finals here Thursday night against Popovich's Spurs, Brown said there is a very simple explanation for their friendship, and for why he chose Popovich to be the best man at his most recent wedding.

"I think we love what we do," Brown said. "I don't think anyone loves it more than Pop, except maybe me."

On the court, the two are of the same mind: They like the same kind of players and coach the same kind of basketball. And their defense-first teams reflect those values.

"I watch them play sometimes and it's almost a mirror image to us," said Joe Dumars, the 'Pistons' president of basketball operations. "They run some of the same stuff. Their styles are identical."

Sure, there are differences: Brown uses a set rotation and depends on his starters for a good 40 minutes a game, and you practically need a flow chart and proficiency in shorthand to track Popovich's complicated substitutions. Yet the two are well acquainted with each other's thinking. They spent the last two summers together coaching the U.S. Olympic team, and during the regular season, they talk nearly every day by phone.

"He's a phenomenal coach and person," Brown said.

Said Popovich: "Without him, I wouldn't be here, so it's kind of cool."

Brown first met Popovich, 56, when he was a player at Air Force. He gave Popovich his big break when he plucked him out of Pomona-Pitzer (Calif.) College, where he coached for seven seasons, and invited him to spend a year at Kansas as an unpaid observer during the 1986-87 season. Brown liked what he saw. When Brown took the Spurs' head-coaching job in 1988, he brought Popovich with him as an assistant.

Popovich won titles with the Spurs in 1999 and 2003. Brown won his first NBA championship last year in Detroit. Before this, the closest they came to coaching against each other in postseason was in 2001, when Brown's 76ers made the NBA Finals and the Spurs reached the Western Conference finals.

There is some thought that Popovich almost felt guilty about winning a ring before his benefactor, especially with a team that Brown brought him to. In November 1999, the Spurs held a ceremony before a game against Brown's 76ers, where they gave rings to all the Spurs who won the championship the season before by beating the Knicks. Popovich tried to hand his ring to Brown, who wouldn't take it.

"That's just him, and who he's about," Brown said Wednesday. "It was his way of maybe thanking me. But I've benefited more than he has with this relationship."

This time, the two will be fighting for the same ring, which is just the way they want it.

"It will be a strange situation, trying to beat somebody up and hoping they do well at the same time," Popovich said. "It's sort of a schizophrenic approach. But it's a real thrill to look into the Finals and see the guy who brought you into the league in the first place."