FanHouse LarryBrown

Earlier this week, the NBA fined Washington's Gilbert Arenas $25,000 for refusing to speak; today, it fined Larry Brown and the Bobcats a combined $120,000 for Brown talking too much. Brown hasn't been happy with the NBA's replacement referees all preseason, and his frustration boiled over on Monday when he was ejected from Charlotte's game against the Hawks in a contest that featured 61 fouls and five total technical fouls.

In a Charlotte Observer story this morning, Bobcats coach Larry Brown tells beat writer Rick Bonnell that certain NBA rules have strangled the game's beauty. Brown most recently blew up at a replacement referee who wouldn't look him in the eye, but the coach is now putting on the pose that the game is not entertaining fans because of ... illegal defense rules?

Brown tells Bonnell that the league needs to force the game into a more "up-and-down" style, to reignite flow into the sport by allowing any type of defense and moving in the three-point line. Hey, maybe he's right. I'm not opposed to a free-flowing game. But my Hypocrisy Radar is bugging out, and you can't just ignore a Hypocrisy Radar.

An hour before the Phoenix Suns were set to play their first preseason game of the year, I asked the team's head coach, Alvin Gentry, how he felt about the prospect of replacement referees calling the games. His response?

"You think I'm touching that one?" Gentry joked. "You want to see the memo I got from the league?"

Actually, I did, but he didn't have it handy. The point was, replacement referees are a touchy subject, and complaints about them were supposed to be kept to the bare minimum by team personnel.

Apparently, Larry Brown didn't get the memo. Because he flipped out and was ejected by the replacement refs during his Bobcats' preseason game Monday night against the Atlanta Hawks.

FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

The Bobcats are a playoff contender. I know it sounds weird. If you need to take a few minutes to repeat that to yourself in order to suspend belief in pursuit of finishing this column, feel free. I'll wait.

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Ready? Okay, let's begin. The Bobcats are a playoff contender, and have been since Larry Brown decided to dump his best player (Jason Richardson) to Phoenix for jack-of-all-trades-master-of-awkward-spacing Boris Diaw and older than dirt Raja Bell. When that trade occurred, there was universal questioning of what in the carolina blue blazes Larry Brown was thinking. You don't ditch your best player!

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Sean Deveney of The Baseline reports that Charlotte point guard Raymond Felton plans to accept the $5.5 million qualifying offer presented by the Bobcats at the start of free agency. The qualifying offer allowed Charlotte to match any offer sheet from another team signed by Felton. But Felton never found a team willing to pay what he desired. Felton will be an unrestricted free agent next July.

While this result is hardly surprising, there remains a herd of elephants in the room. There's D.J. Augustin, the lottery pick successor to Felton entering his second season. There's Larry Brown, the notoriously trigger-happy boss of the team. And there's Felton himself, who has proved if nothing else over his four seasons that he is just not very good.

Try and hang on here, because this is a little more complicated than the naked eye would leave you to believe.

Now, the easy way to do this would be to have headlined this sucker 'Report: Allen Iverson Close To Signing With Bobcats'. Dime Magazine broke that story Saturday night, claiming a league source informed Aron Phillips that a deal is done, but can't be announced till next week.

Nice, and simple, right? Let's all start the Larry Brown-Iverson reunion discussion. And that could very well happen. But the fact is, this thing is a bit more complicated. And why wouldn't it be? It's only been going on for three months.

I would love to be able to defend Charlotte coach Larry Brown's comments regarding his plot for new Bobcat Tyson Chandler. The Baseline's Sean Deveney jumped on Brown's post-trade conference call, where Brown told reporters he'd be using the 7'1 Chandler as Boris Diaw's back-up at power forward.

I really wish I were brave enough to applaud Larry's idea. But unfortunately, I didn't drop enough acid this morning.

Allen Iverson needs to lay low for a while.

After establishing himself as a potential Hall of Fame guard, with offensive skills never before seen in the league and establishing himself as a perennial winner who's only flaw was that he was surrounded by insufficient backup, the last year has done a lot to tarnish that reputation. After being traded to Detroit he was an outright disaster, unable to find his place in the offense or in the locker room. Meanwhile the guard he was traded for, Chauncey Billups, lead his team to the Conference Finals.

As a free agent this summer, Iverson needs to go somewhere quietly and rebuild his image, much the same way that his old coach Larry Brown has in Charlotte. But it might be another small market team Iverson ends up with. One that now features an... eclectic makeup of personalities.

Iverson might be headed South for the Winter.

By theory, the NBA Draft Lottery (Tuesday at 8:00 PM ET) is left to randomness. But what if basketball karma dictated the results? Good triumphs over evil. Fairness and compassion reign. Robert Horry does not exist. It's a wonderful world.

Close your eyes and imagine how the ping pong balls would bounce if karma ruled tonight's lottery ...

It's trophy time in the NBA, and the FanHouse crew has submitted its ballots. Find out which players deserve to take home the hardware and which ones don't, in our NBA Awards series. Next up: Coach of the Year.

This turned out to be one of those seasons where it would be hard to be wrong in making a pick for Coach of the Year. Eight different coaches were named by our voters, and it was so close that we ended up with a tie for third place. But the one man that stood out above the rest was the one holding the clipboard to your right.