In Olympic victory, Brown the biggest loser in the house

ATHENS, Greece - Larry Brown did what Larry Brown always does when trapped in a corner like a guard who stopped his dribble too soon: He lied. Larry the Liar claimed that the humiliating timeout he called at the end of this victory over Spain was a simple misunderstanding, an innocent mishap lost in translation between the Greek and NBA alphabets.

And the coach sitting to his left on a news conference dais, Mario Pesquera, did what players, coaches and columnists have done around Brown across his self-serving basketball life.

Pesquera shook his head. Rolled his eyes. Huffed and puffed over the drivel Brown was spitting into the mike to cover his own dirty tracks.

"Do you want some of me?'' the ugly American coach had barked at Pesquera after the 102-94 quarterfinal score was frozen in lights. Brown and Pesquera were shouting and pointing fingers at each other before being separated by their assistants, this after the U.S. coach all but ruined a near-flawless performance by Stephon Marbury, who only broke his country's Olympic scoring record with 31 points.

Brown had called a timeout with 23 seconds left, United States up 11, and then stepped to a mike and said he tried to rescind the timeout when he realized the size of his team's lead. Brown lied and, yes, Mario Pesquera did want a piece of him.

"I had, I stress 'had,' a lot of respect for Larry Brown,'' the Spanish coach said. "If you ask for a timeout and you ask for it mistakenly, and it wasn't annulled by the technical officials, you can do something. You can actually send your players back out again. You don't need to have them there for 20 seconds to get instruction.''

Pesquera gave Brown all he wanted, then threw the haymaker that put him on his rear.

"Let me just qualify that I will continue to respect Larry Brown as a coach,'' Pesquera said. "(But) for me, a (coach) who is up there with the best like Dean Smith would've never done anything like that.''

If you can ever believe anything Brown says, the American coach holds nothing more dear than his bond with Coach Smith. Only it's doubtful Smith would even return a phone call from his former point guard right now.

Brown has embarrassed himself, his team and his country with yet another public display of hubris, and one ranking up there with his decision to chase a ref off the court as an assistant in Sydney. Put this in the bank: Not a single high-ranking official inside USA Basketball or the NBA is happy that Larry Brown is the head coach of the Olympic basketball team.

Brown has ripped the selection committee for the roster it dealt him, even though he wanted Emeka Okafor - a complete waste of a pick - instead of one of the shooters the committee wanted instead. Never mind that the committee waded through an overwhelming pile of rejection notices and still gave Brown the world's best player, Tim Duncan, and the best supporting cast in the field.

The U.S. coach has distanced himself from the team in the event it fails to win the gold. He has ripped players who are clearly trying their damnedest to win, and who haven't approached the level of bad-sport behavior Brown serves up on an every-other-possession basis.

The players aren't the problem here. Marbury proved he hasn't quit on himself, or anybody else, lifting himself out of a miserable tournament by draining six three-pointers in nine attempts, breaking Reggie Miller's 8-year-old American Olympic record of five threes.

Marbury spent 90 minutes on his day off working on his long, lost jumper, beating the volleyball team to the practice court. He talked about how hard it was to meet Brown's demands, and how he looked forward to incorporating everything he'd learned from Brown into his game on the Madison Square Garden floor.

But what is Brown teaching when he diminishes an already beaten opponent, then declares 10 minutes later that American players sometimes "haven't acted the best''?

"When I asked for the timeout, it was an eight-point game,'' Brown claimed, even though the United States never held less than a nine-point lead in the final minute.

"I think some of the time went off the clock, and then when I saw the score I told (the official scorer) we didn't need the timeout, and she gave it to me, anyway. ... We had basically turned the ball over twice against their press, and I'm still trying to teach and win a game.

"I tried to waive (the timeout) off, but they wouldn't let me.''

In Brown's world, it's always someone else's fault. But his story was like most of his stories: littered with canyonesque holes. If Brown had asked for a timeout earlier in the final minute, there were any number of foul calls, free throw attempts and substitutions that would've stopped the clock and awarded that timeout.

Pesquera knew Brown was full of it, so when the United States was granted its precious timeout with Spain down 101-90, the fans whistled and the Spanish players and coaches pointed and gestured at the huddling Americans.

Diplomacy had no place in the postgame playbook. Pesquera got in Brown's face. The Spanish coach knew his counterpart was trying to play him for a fool.

"That was like a disagreement with my son; sometimes he doesn't let me explain,'' Brown said at his news conference, with Pesquera sitting two seats to his left. "I tried to explain and (Pesquera) didn't want to hear it. I don't know if he understood. I knew he went to North Carolina and watched them practice, so he had to understand something.

"But I tried to apologize ... and he kept saying something about the NBA.''

Pesquera didn't receive the proper translation for Brown's reference to his son. He did get the proper translation for Brown's reference to North Carolina, and pounced on the opening by summoning the saintly image of Dean Smith.

"I would never try to embarrass anybody,'' Brown said.

He majored in embarrassment at Chapel Hill.

On any other day, Pesquera would've come off as the biggest baby in Greece. He claimed that too many traveling violations went uncalled, that too much contact was allowed, that the game was played under NBA rules instead of FIBA rules. He complained about his draw after going 5-0 in the prelims. He decreed that Spain had the superior team.

"It was said that the public supported the weaker team,'' Pesquera said of the pro-Spain crowd. "I think in this case, the public was solidly behind the stronger team, because I think we were the stronger team.''

Spain had the second-best team on the floor, and Larry Brown called an extra timeout to make sure everyone knew. Later, his dog-ate-my-homework explanation couldn't change the final score on the quarterfinal board:

The winning coach was the biggest loser in the house.