Sports

Quick hooks for coaches nothing new

This wasn’t the worst itchy, twitchy finger we’ve ever seen. That would have to belong to Paul Snyder, the original owner of the Buffalo Braves, the team now known as the Los Angeles Clippers.

On Oct. 13, 1971, the Braves — in the 83rd game in franchise history, the first of their second season — hosted the Seattle Supersonics in front of 10,723 fans at old Memorial Auditorium. It did not go well. The Sonics outscored the Braves 36-20 in the fourth quarter and pulled away to a 123-90 win.

As they filed out of the Aud that night, 10,722 fans undoubtedly shook their heads, braced for another season of growing pains. The Braves had gone 22-60 in their first year, not surprising for a time before free agency, when expansion teams were, by definition, awful, especially because, in a 17-team league, you had to keep playing terrific teams like the Knicks and Celtics and Bullets again and again and again.

One person walking out of the Aud that night was most especially not taking it with a calm Zen demeanor. That would be Snyder. The next morning, he summoned coach Dolph Schayes to his office. Schayes — who maybe should have been more wary, since he had been fired by the Sixers in 1966 after winning Coach of the Year honors — thought he was getting a pep talk.

Instead, he got a pink slip.

“I expected to hear, ‘You’re doing a hell of a job but it takes time,’” Schayes told me many years ago. “Instead it was, ‘You’re out of a job and you have no more time.’”

The Braves, by the way, were awful. They went 22-60 again, hired Dr. Jack Ramsay, drafted Bob McAdoo and Ernie DiGregorio and had a fleeting burst of prosperity in Western New York before being hijacked to Southern California. And left behind that most ignominious benchmark: one and done. Literally.

So Mike Brown can take solace in that. Maybe.

This is different, of course, because the Lakers are a championship contender, they looked awful in their first five games of the season, and Brown didn’t exactly have the best track record ever when he was hired. If he were going to be coaching for his job every game, if every day were going to be some kind of referendum on his fitness for the job, then the Lakers may have done themselves a favor by cutting their losses. Especially if Phil Jackson winds up coming back for a third stint in Hollywood.

Still … it does lend life to the already paranoid ranks of coaches who perpetually are looking over their shoulder. Five games? It isn’t Schayes. In the overall scope of things, it may not be the 14 games George Steinbrenner gave Bob Lemon in 1982, or the 16 games he gave Yogi Berra in 1985 (although, far as anyone knows, no one in the Buss family guaranteed Brown a whole season, as Steinbrenner did for both Lemon and Berra).

Nor was it George Allen, whose second stint with the Los Angeles Rams never made it past two exhibition games in 1978 (or, for that matter, Allie Sherman, who was fired for, in essence, losing the Giants’ first-ever exhibition game with the Jets at the Yale Bowl in August 1969). Pro sports is pro sports, after all — no medals for trying, no ribbons for volunteering to coach. And Mike Brown does get a lovely $11 million parting gift.

And this consolation prize, too: At least he got five times more of a chance in 2012 than Dolph Schayes got in 1971.

Whack Back at Vac

Bob Buscavage: Thank goodness the Mets will no longer be sittin’ on the dock of the (Jason) Bay, watching his at-bats roll away!

Vac: Wastin’ ti-i-i-i-ime …

Chuck Padolsky: I identified with your passion as a sports fan. I still have my last set of baseball cards that I collected in 1960 … which I protected from my mother, and every year I look at them just to never forget my Brooklyn childhood.

Vac: One of the great scenes of Opening Night at Barclays Center was watching how clearly and overwhelmingly happy spectators old enough to have also seen a game in Ebbets Field were. Patience does pay off sometimes.

@BOKBrooklyn: You should welcome the Red Bulls to the Pantheon of horrible New York playoff losses. I’m thinking Jets/Browns, but open to other ideas.

@MikeVacc: In its own way that loss Thursday deserves its own chapter up there with that, with Giants/49ers, with Mets/Cardinals and with Knicks/Pacers.

Don Reed: Mike, belated 10th-year anniversary! And on the day of the hurricane! Do us all a favor: On your year-15 anniversary, be somewhere in Albania.

Vac: At the very least I’ll have my mail forwarded there for a few days, to try and execute a head-fake on Mother Nature. Deal?

Vac’s Whacks

There seems to be an odd disconnect at work with the lingering hard feeling surrounding the New York City Marathon. There are some runners who feel like they were targeted, and though I can only speak for myself, I believe whatever anger raged was directed at the mopes who run the race and not the runners themselves. In fact, a good many runners covered themselves in glory last week, channeling whatever disappointment into doing what they could to help. The runners were the good guys (and gals). The mayor and the CEO of the NYRR? Not so much. Big difference.

* When Antonio Cromartie or any other Jets speak anymore, do they really make a sound?

* I’m ready for some college hoops. I’m ready for the Johnnies and I’m ready for Fordham, (and, yes, I’m ready for the Bonnies), and I’m ready for two terrific doubleheaders the Gazelle Group is bringing to town the next few weeks: the 2K Sports Classic at the Garden Thursday and Friday, benefitting the Wounded Warrior Project, with Villanova, Purdue, Alabama and Oregon State; and the Progressive Legends Classic at Barclays Center Nov. 19-20 with Indiana, UCLA, Georgetown and Georgia.

* I know some friends on Long Island who could maybe use Nate Silver’s logarithms on when, exactly, they’ll be able to read without candles again.