As you might have heard, new Lakers coach Mike Brown and his wife Carolyn purchased a home in Anaheim Hills.
That might sound like a rookie mistake given it's 44 miles to the Lakers practice facility and what seems like three days inching across the freeways if you're headed to the Staples Center at rush hour. But it makes sense for the Browns because they have a couple kids playing sports at Mater Dei. Besides, coach has a method to his traffic madness.
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“My
basketball operations assistant, Kyle Triggs . . . I told him there's one
prerequisite for coming out and taking this job: You have to live out in Anaheim Hills, because I'm
not too keen on having one of those fake dummies that everyone keeps
telling me to get to put in the passenger seat,” Brown said during a
recent LakersTV interview (hat tip to Lakers.com's Mike Trudell). .
“I have a good 45 minutes where I know that if I plan it right, I can be productive.”
Triggs will be behind the wheel as Brown spends his time in the passenger seat watching game tape, drawing up plays and making phone calls to his assistants or scouts.
His driver will also have “zero privileges” in terms of choosing music.
“I'm an equal opportunist,
so at times I may have some rap, though more older school,” Brown
explained. “One time I had LL Cool J on and my son asked who it was. But
right after LL Cool J on my iPod is a Kenny Rogers song. And then maybe
some Kid Rock, maybe some jazz. It doesn't matter as long as I can feel the music a little bit.”
The clank Brown will feel on the top of the car will be the clamp from the towing cable dangling from Newport Coaster Kobe Bryant's helicopter whenever coach is running late.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.