Brown Waves Aloha to Clippers : Pro basketball: After 1 1/2 seasons, coach sends resignation by agent. Next stop might be Indiana. Clippers could be interested in Wilkens.

Larry Brown announced his resignation as coach of the Clippers on Thursday, adding to the vagabond reputation that so irritates him and ending 1 1/2 seasons of the greatest success in team history.

Brown is a candidate for the vacant position with the Indiana Pacers, where his close friend, Donnie Walsh, is general manager. Brown’s agent, Joe Glass, would not say whether the interest was mutual.

“I just think Larry felt the time was right to pursue opportunities in other directions,” Glass said.

True to his reputation--along with success, he brought turmoil that stretched from the locker room to the front office--Brown confounded the Clippers to the end. Reporters knew of his plan to go to Hawaii this week for vacation days before management did.

And when the Clipper staff met Tuesday at the Sports Arena, the talk was solely about free agents, trade possibilities and summer plans, with Brown apparently ready to go full steam ahead in Los Angeles.

Then he went to Hawaii and left it to Glass to call the Clippers with his resignation. As of Thursday evening, no one from the team had even spoken to Brown, who did leave something to remind the Clippers of him. Brown, the absentee, had arranged for that day’s tryout for former UCLA guard Gerald Madkins.

“Nothing surprises me in this business,” General Manager Elgin Baylor said.

But. . . .

“You can say no one was expecting this.”

Clearly, the Clippers were caught flat-footed. Reporters knew more about the impending decision than some of the highest-ranking team officials.

That didn’t leave them much time Thursday to contemplate a replacement. They will tackle that subject in earnest today and also await a decision from Cleveland on the future of Coach Lenny Wilkens. No. 2 on the all-time list of coaching winners, behind Red Auerbach, Wilkens’ resigning or being fired by the Cavaliers would immediately make him a strong candidate with the Clippers.

Brown walked away from a contract that had two years left at $750,000 per season and a third season at the same amount at his option. His 117-game stint continued a cycle of Clipper coaches lasting only 1 1/2 years--Gene Shue, Don Casey and Mike Schuler were all fired after similar stays--but more than that added to Brown’s reputation as a wanderer.

The Clippers were going to be different, he said when he was hired Feb. 5, 1992, to replace Schuler. Part of the motivation was shedding the image as a vagabond coach, which he sometimes joked and other times bristled about. And it was as well documented in Los Angeles as anywhere, because he had twice left UCLA, once within hours after accepting the job.

The other part was the motivation of having been fired by the San Antonio Spurs two weeks earlier, the first time Brown had been pink-slipped in his coaching career. That, Brown said, meant he had something to prove to himself.

The relationship couldn’t have started out much better. The Clippers went 18-7 the rest of February and March and made the playoffs for the first time since the franchise was in Buffalo. They were eliminated in the first round by Utah, but only after taking the heavily favored Jazz to a deciding Game 5 and leading in the fourth quarter.

Problems started to emerge this season. Danny Manning, with whom Brown had won the NCAA title at Kansas in 1988, asked for a trade in early January, citing a poor relationship with his coach. Manning rescinded the request two days later, but questions and doubts remained.

Part of that was brought on by Brown’s frustration around the trading deadline, when the uncertainties were not resolved about Manning and several other prominent players on track to become free agents. The public airing of those feelings incensed team officials, who believed their coach should have kept team business behind closed doors.

Management gritted its teeth, but said nothing to Brown, hoping the situation would defuse itself. It did in time, but conflicts with players escalated as the playoffs neared. The Clippers again pushed another favorite to a fifth game before losing at Houston, but the series included, according to one player, a brief halftime shouting match between Brown and Ken Norman.

Speculation that Brown would leave at the end of the season became common, but it usually is.

“That’s just my reputation speaking,” he said earlier this week, again reiterating his desire to stay.

In the end, it was the day the Clippers knew all along might be coming, the day Brown resigned. They had considered such a possibility before hiring him, but said the trade-off of getting a high-profile coach known for his teaching skills would be worth it, even if that meant having to start a new search in two or three years.

Sixteen months later, the Clippers are searching again.

Times staff writer Jerry Crowe contributed to this story.