Long before the nickname "Next Town" Larry Brown came about, the Charlotte Bobcats' new coach was in charge of another North Carolina professional basketball team.

It was with the Carolina Cougars of the now defunct American Basketball Association in the 1970s that Brown's uncanny knack for turning wayward teams into winners first emerged.

Going to an ABA game was somewhat akin to visiting a fortune teller. The final reading was almost always in doubt, and the route to victory or defeat routinely was swayed by a flip of the wrist of an often unknown player.

Rosters could be revamped overnight. The red, white and blue game balls looked like something out of an Andy Warhol painting.

The Cougars had three homecourts -- the original Charlotte Coliseum, Greensboro Coliseum and Raleigh's Dorton Arena -- which may have been the genesis of Brown's migratory ways.

"It was pillar-to-post basketball at times, but it was fun," said Carl Scheer, the Cougars' general manager during the early '70s. "I think we hired Larry for something in the neighborhood of $35,000 a year before the 1972-73 season. Then he said he needed an assistant coach, which created a budget panic. We found a way, though. Somewhere we found enough money to let him hire Doug Moe. But most of the teams had only one coach, and that coach was in charge of having to do just about everything."

Brown turned out to be perhaps the best investment the team made.

Having gone 34-50 and 35-49 the previous two seasons, the Cougars were 57-27 in Brown's first season. They finished first in the Eastern Division and did much to change the image of the struggling league.

"He was a great coach then, just as he is now," said former North Carolina star Dennis Wuycik, a rookie forward on the 1972-73 team and eventual founder of the ACC Area Sports Journal. "He was big on preparation from the start. We were ready to play every game, even those of us who were just learning about the pro game."

At Carolina, Wuycik had been a two-time all-ACC player under Dean Smith, who introduced Brown to coaching after his playing career with the Tar Heels. But Wuycik said the popular notion that Brown is a Smith clone isn't accurate.

"Each had their separate style, I thought," Wuycik said. "There were a few things they had in common, of course. Both obviously put a lot of emphasis on defense. Both were great teachers and very thorough, but it was never like I thought Coach Brown was just an extension of Coach Smith."

That heavy emphasis on defense, according to Scheer, set Brown apart from some pro coaches of the time. It was especially true in the free-wheeling ABA, where some of the top scorers were notorious for taking nights off on defense.

"Larry's preseason practice camp his first season was a pretty big change for a few guys," Scheer said. "I remember we held it at Appalachian State in Boone, and the work pace was fairly demanding by pro standards. I think it probably caught some of the guys by surprise. But when we broke camp, I remember thinking that other teams in the league were going to surprised by our playing style. We were a lot more active on defense than most ABA teams."

It also was the most talented team of the Cougars' five-season existence. The roster included former NBA stars Billy Cunningham and Joe Caldwell, plus standout guards Mack Calvin, Ted McClain and Gene Littles.

"That was a good team by any comparison of the time," Scheer said. "We didn't have great size, which some other teams in both leagues did. But you could tell that Larry was going to be a coach who could get the most of his roster."

By the start of the 1974-75 season, the Cougars were gone. Although attendance wasn't bad by ABA standards, then-owner Tedd Munchak sold the franchise to a group that relocated the team to St. Louis. Brown, with Moe still working as an aide, moved on to Denver, where he won 175 games during his first three seasons.

Years later, Brown is back in Charlotte, again coaching a pro team sporting the face of a feline.