
Just an hour ago, Larry Brown’s experience in Italy officially came to an end. Hall of Fame head coach and the Italian side have mutually agreed to part ways, the team announced in a press release. The news was already anticipated by Italian website Sportando during the afternoon. The last home loss against Scandone Avellino, suffered yesterday, cost Brown his job. The fans in Torino booed Brown during the game and at the end of the match asked the team to fire Brown and replace him with assistant coach Paolo Galbiati, who led the team to the win in last season’s Italian Cup.
Larry Brown experience with Torino has been a complete disaster. He coached the team in 24 games and won only five matches, four in the Italian League and one in the Italian Supercup at the beginning of the season. Larry Brown worst record belongs to the Eurocup competition in which Torino lost all the ten games played, failing to qualify for the Top 16 and finishing the season as the only team without a win in the European competition. The team will now be coached by Paolo Galbiati, who’ll act as head coach, and Stefano Comazzi, who’ll be the main assistant coach. With Larry Brown leaving the team, also his personal assistant Dante Calabria, a former North Carolina alum with a very long professional career in Europe, has parted ways with Torino, as announced in a separate statement.
Last week, Marco Cusin, a member of the Fiat Torino roster, expressed doubts about Larry Brown’s system. The Italian big man said in an interview that coach Brown wasn’t putting enough focus on the defensive side of the game and that his idea of basketball wasn’t adapting to European basketball. Several sources with knowledge of the situation told Def Pen Hoops that Brown actually lost the control of the team pretty quickly. Most of the players with experience of European basketball weren’t satisfied with his way of coaching and also a couple of the American players, who believed in him at first, quickly lost confidence in his system and his actual interest of fixing the situation.