Brown’s style will serve him well in L.A.

Mike Brown's emphasis on defense and a slow-it-down game will work well for Kobe and the aging Lakers. (Derick E. Hingle-US PRESSWIRE)

Predicting how a coach will do with one team based on how he did with another is a tricky business. The prevailing reaction Tuesday night on Twitter after Yahoo! Sports broke the news that the Lakers were closing in on Mike Brown was a mix of surprise; sadness on behalf Brian Shaw; outright dismissal of the former Cleveland coach as a nitwit when it comes to offense; and quiet consideration that this could work.

The book on Brown, who agreed to a four-year, $18 million deal with the Lakers on Wednesday, is that he is a defense-first coach who leaned too much on isolation basketball with LeBron James, as the Cavaliers played a boring, slow and predictable offense. There is truth in that, but it ignores Brown’s adaptability. When the talent surrounding James was tilted more toward interior rebounders, Brown’s offense was a so-so outfit that attempted three-pointers at an average rate and crashed the offensive glass like a bunch of madmen. The Cavs ranked 10th, third and second in offensive rebounding rate in consecutive seasons starting in 2005-06, Brown’s first as a head man.

AMICK: Lakers hire ex-Cavs coach Brown

The talent shifted out to the perimeter a bit starting in 2008-09, when Mo Williams arrived, Daniel Gibson played a big role and Ben Wallace saw his minutes drop. The Cavs that season rocketed up to fourth in points per possession, started taking more threes and stopped prioritizing the offensive glass as much. The trends continued in 2009-10, Brown’s final season, when Cleveland ranked sixth in offensive efficiency and dropped into the bottom 10 in offensive rebounding.

Brown, in other words, was willing to change, and the Cavs’ offense — their alleged weakness — became a huge strength. Much of the credit went to John Kuester, Brown’s lead assistant and now Detroit’s embattled head coach, but the Cavs’ offense remained strong after Kuester left. Credit Kuester for some of that lasting improvement, but part of coaching is stealing from colleagues instead of being stubborn.

This is not to say that Brown is some sort of scoring genius, or that Cleveland’s offense was exciting or meltdown-proof. He’s not, and it wasn’t. The Cavs played at one of the slowest paces in the league in all five of Brown’s seasons there, and they did fall back too often on LeBron high pick-and-rolls, allowing great defensive teams to load up on him and force long jumpers. Perhaps Brown should have pushed the pace a bit or experimented more with James at power forward, as Miami coach Erik Spoelstra has done this season. He badly misused Shaquille O’Neal, though he had very little time to work with Shaq and Antawn Jamison together during his final season in Cleveland. Those are legitimate criticisms, especially when looking back at Cleveland’s flameout last season against Boston, when the Celtics obliterated the Cavs’ frontcourt on both ends. (I’m still embarrassed for Jamison.)

But overall, Brown’s playbook is more creative than he’s received credit for (see some of the clips here), and there are reasons to believe he could fit well in Los Angeles:

• The Lakers are no longer a fast-paced team. After ranking near the top of the league in pace for much of Kobe Bryant’s post-Shaq prime, the Lakers fell into the bottom 10 this season, a change that reflects Bryant’s age and the rest of the core pieces outside Andrew Bynum. Brown’s preference for a slow-it-down half-court game will fit in well here.

Obviously, Brown’s ability to squeeze the most out of this offense will depend on a number of unknowns — whether the Lakers keep the triangle offense, the health of key players and his ability to transition Bryant into a less ball-dominant role as he gets older. In hiring Brown, the did not bring on an offensive dunce, but Brown will suffice on a team blessed with enormous skill and players who know what they are doing.

• Brown’s defensive principles aren’t that far removed from those the Lakers have used in recent seasons.

The Lakers’ defense, when it is going right, does three things extremely well:

1) Defend three-point shots

2) Take care of the defensive glass

3) Avoid fouls

Brown is a Gregg Popovich disciple, so he believes in the importance of all of those things, even if emphasizing the defensive glass and foul avoidance means forcing relatively few turnovers. The Cavs never ranked worse than ninth in defensive rebounding rate during Brown’s tenure.

Let’s be blunt: The Lakers’ defense collapsed in the playoffs. It was embarrassing. By the end of the Dallas series, players had no idea who was supposed to be doing what on pick-and-roll plays involving Dirk Nowitzki as the screener. Before this season, the Lakers consistently played a brand of defense that involved attacking ball-handlers hard on pick-and-roll plays and overloading the strong side by sliding a defender over from the weak side. That is not so different from how the Celtics and Bulls play, nor from the system Brown favored in Cleveland. The goal is to stop penetration and protect the paint, and helping this way without giving up open looks elsewhere requires smart rotations from all five guys.

The Lakers adjusted a bit this season by toning down the aggressiveness and instead having their big guys (especially Bynum) sag back into the paint on pick-and-rolls. They wanted to force mid-range shots and funnel dribblers toward Bynum, and for a while it worked.

But it faltered against Chris Paul in the first round and devolved into chaos against the Mavericks. Brown is a demanding defensive coach, and wherever he ends up, he will install a system and hold players accountable. The Lakers need that, which is why Brown has emerged as the front-runner.

Like every coach, Brown has a record, but that record is a bit more complex than some might believe, and it should not alone define him. He’s 41, he’s been trained by some of the league’s best coaches and he showed a degree of flexibility in Cleveland that will serve him well. The Lakers could have done much, much worse.