He does not take it as a compliment that half the league gives him, and him alone, the benefit of the doubt on this choice of his, this re-anointing of 69-year-old Hubie Brown.

"Indirectly, they're saying (Brown) is crazy," Jerry West says.

Maybe that's true. But what they're saying flat-out directly is that Jerry's Brain does not get second-guessed. It is a collection of synapses that fire in a manner of different directions, and over the years, his mind has operated at its own pace. And when West looked at his squad, he saw Pau Gasol and Shane Battier not getting any better under Sidney Lowe. So he thought about the best teachers of the game for his team, the youngest in the league, and he thought Brown. Not TV analyst Brown, not former dyspeptic Coach Brown, but Teacher Brown. And he doesn't care what anybody thinks about it. Yet, Jerry is comfortable enough with his brain, and how it fires, that his first explanation as to why he went for Hubie is probably the honest one.

	No one thinks out of the box more than Grizzlies general manager Jerry West.

"I don't even know why," West said.

It started about a year ago, when West was still in retirement, when he asked Brown casually if he'd ever get back into coaching. Brown said maybe. Then, at the draft, he had another general conversation with Brown, and you can read bad things into this if you will, but the bottom line is that Jerry West inherited a 23-59 squad, and if he wasn't thinking about potential replacements for Lowe, he'd have been daft.

"Then, I was talking to Sidney (last week)," West recalls, after Memphis got out of the box 0-8, "and I said, 'What the hell. I think we need something here that's different.' "

So Lowe resigned. Well, that's what they're calling it, anyway, but Lowe is getting paid for the final year of his contract, which normally doesn't happen with a guy that's resigned, but that's water under the bridge and Lowe will survive and coach again in this league. The only thing I'd offer as a matter of explanation for how bad the Grizzle was in its opening fortnight was a brutal schedule, but even if you accept that, there was another, bigger reason for West's taking Brown: West inherited a salary-cap nightmare.

The Grizzlies will be a luxury tax payer after this season, with a payroll in excess of $62 million. And they'll pay again next season, when their team price tag increases to $65 million. (Meanwhile, Steve Francis is dropping 28 a night in Houston, and Mike Bibby will be back on the floor in three weeks for the Kings. Would've been an interesting backcourt.) Only after the 2003-04 season will Memphis get out from under Big Country Reeves's contract ($12.99 million this season; $14.4 million next) and fall under the cap. There is no chance for Memphis to be a player in free agency for two more summers, and next year, Memphis's first-round pick goes to Detroit unless it is the first pick overall. So West had to jump-start the educational process, get more out of what he's got, because it's all he's going to have for a while.

Enter Brown.

"He never was the beneficiary of really good teams in the NBA," West said, "and he went in there and turned around teams, and made them playoff teams. We've got a lot of different players here. We've got foreign kids, young NBA players, and I just felt it was something we really, really needed. The teams that win in our league are the ones that are really experienced. They've gone through their growing pains. We don't have that here. One of the biggest tasks we have is finding out who can play at a high level here. I think we will do that (with Brown)."

It's not that West is right every year about every player -- he isn't. But when he is right, he doesn't allow anyone to talk him out of it. This league is filled with personnel guys who won't pull the trigger on a decision until they talk to every scout, coach and pundit in their Rolodex. The Grizzlies were right when they took Francis, and the Nets were right when they were about to take Kobe Bryant. But they allowed others to talk (or threaten) them out of it. Losing franchises seem to do that. West, though, doesn't believe in putting his finger in the wind to help him decide.

"It's not so much trust," he said. "I just think if you ask 10 people, you're going to get more than one opinion. If you ask five people, you're going to get more than one opinion. I'd rather not confuse myself by asking 10 people."

Yes, he chatted about Brown with Stan Albeck, the Raptors' assistant who's recovering from a stroke and who had been Brown's assistant in Atlanta all those years ago. But for the most part, West kept his own counsel.

	“	I don't care about what other people say. Why don't really good coaches win in this league? Because they get really (bad) teams. ”
		— Jerry West

Says Mitch Kupchak, now the Lakers' general manager, of his former boss: "He's always done his due diligence, and if you do that, seven to 10 times you're going to come up with the same answer as everyone else. The one thing that Jerry does a little differently is he will follow an initial instinct, and that may get him outside the box. He has a lot of confidence, and he's not afraid to make a mistake."

Of course, this is best exemplified by the story that everyone knows, about West's taking Vlade Divac late in the first round of the 1989 draft over the objections of everyone else in the Lakers' organization.

"We all picked the other guy," Kupchak recalled. "I think it was Gary Leonard (the Missouri center). We all agree. Then (West) leans down into the mic, which was hooked up to New York so that we can announce our choice. Our guy up there was Hampton Mears. And Jerry says, 'Hampton' -- he's looking at us when he says this -- he says, 'Hampton, the Lakers take Divac.' The three of us were like 'Why are we even here?' And he says, 'He's just too damned talented to pass on.' And he walked out of the room."

So it goes with West. What seems a gamble outside his brain is just another decision to make, another time to put it on the line. He knows Brown isn't going to work miracles, because there's too much in Memphis that needs doing. Gasol is a nice young player and Battier and Drew Gooden have potential, but there isn't a star on this roster, and West knows it. I point the following only as a possibility: Kobe can opt out of his contract after the 2003-04 season. At that same moment, the Grizzlies will finally get under the cap. For what it's worth to you.

"I know what we're getting here," West said of Brown. "We're getting a no-nonsense guy -- who, by the way, has a nice way with players. I don't care about what other people say. Why don't really good coaches win in this league? Because they get really (bad) teams."

This was supposed to be about Jerry's Brain, but now, I realize the trait that is most admirable about West isn't so much his brain, but other parts of his anatomy. Which appear to be made of brass.

David Aldridge, who covers the NBA for ESPN, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.