Saturday the Oklahoma City Thunder, a team that the Cavs will host on Wednesday, fired head coach P.J. Carlesimo after a 1-12 start. It’s common knowledge in the NBA that coaches are “hired to be fired” if you will, but in the case of the Cavaliers, they have so far found themselves a pretty good coach to run the ship in Mike Brown.

You may like him, or maybe you dislike him, but never the less, you cannot deny that Brown has been a steadying force for a organization that for years seemed to go through coaches rather quickly. Since being hired before the start of the 2005-06 season, Brown has led the Cavs to a 155-104 mark, and has gone 26-20 in the playoffs with a trip to the NBA Finals.

He’s led the team to the playoffs in all three seasons he’s been with the club, and they are a shoe-in to be there again in 2009 unless there is a rather stunning collapse. So even with the mark he’s had, Brown still admits that he has a lot of work to do for the team and the city, and knows that coaches can be let go at just about anytime.

“I haven’t won anything yet,” Brown said before Saturday’s game. “I’ve been fortunate to be with a good group of guys and got to the Finals, but we didn’t accomplish our goals, so I don’t look at anything we’ve done as a team, and think ‘ahhh…I’m safe.’” The year the team reached the Finals, they were eliminated in four games by a team that he won a ring with as an assistant in the San Antonio Spurs. He knows that there is a bigger goal in mind, and that the team has a ways to go to get there. “I’m trying to figure out every day how we get to that ultimate goal, which is to win a championship,” Brown said.

So far Brown has done what owner Dan Gilbert and GM Danny Ferry have wanted out of a coach – lead the team and be a good example in leading the team to being a championship contender year in and year out. He is by no means ready to relax right now and think that just because the team is off to a hot start and again looks poised to make a serious run in the East at a title that he can rest. If anything, it’s just the opposite for the 38-year-old Brown, who knows that the minute you start relaxing, you lose your edge.

“Once you start feeling and thinking that way, you might as well pack your bags, because there is going to be slippage,” Brown said.

Brown realizes that NBA coaching careers are short if you don’t get the job done, and even some of the best coaches such as Phil Jackson have been on the coaching sidelines for more than one team. Then there is a coach like 68-year-old Larry Brown, who this season is in Charlotte, his 9th stop in his 32-year career as an NBA head coach. While Mike Brown is on coaching stop number one, he says he’d like to make Cleveland a stop for a long time to come. “If anyone can stay in one spot for a long time, yeah, that would be great,” Brown said. “I have a family, my wife is vested in the community, my kids have been going to school here 3-4 years, so yes – if you can, we love it here, but that’s not up to me to decide.”

For now, he and the Cavs are doing what it takes to make a run year in and year out for an NBA Title. Three playoff appearances in three years with a fourth coming in April, the Cavs are a solid team with a coach that has done a great job to date. Just don’t tell Brown that. “I gotta work my tail off day by day to put us in a position to win,” Brown said. “If we end up doing enough, maybe we’ll get lucky, if we don’t then we have to move on.” For now though, that should be the furthest thing from his mind.