Sixers are improving one unselfish pass at a time

PHILADELPHIA » Brett Brown has one rule on offense that he will enforce more than the rest. The ball: Get rid of it.

He calls it his pointfive rule. It has nothing to do with the point guard. It has nothing to do with the five man. It means the Sixers have zero-point-five seconds, and not a tenth more, to hold onto the ball before making a decision. Drive. Shoot. Or, in their case more than almost any team in their sport, pass.

“Move that ball,” Robert Covington said with a smile Friday night, after a 121-110 victory over the Indiana Pacers.

Ball movement is as rudimentary a concept as there has been since basketball’s invention. But it’s the quickness and the precision of the movement that will give it a 21st century sheen. When Brown says half-a-second, he means half-a-second. Get it. Move it. Score.

The Sixers did that Friday, as they have done it all season. In a telling victory over a highlevel team, they had 46 field goals and 34 assists. They’d entered the game with 205 assists in eight games, second most in the NBA, behind only the Golden State Warriors, who had 277 in nine. Even if the earliest moments of November are too soon for a firm conclusion, that is impressive and meaningful company.

The Warriors, twice the world champions in the last three years, move the ball with purpose and accuracy. So do the Sixers. So did the Sixers, in particular, in the fourth quarter Friday, when they rallied in the final three minutes to run a winning streak to four.

Ben Simmons assisted on a Robert Covington jumper at 2:39, then on a J.J. Redick triple at 2:09. At 1:08, Redick scored from Joel Embiid. Simmons found Redick for a dagger at 0:46. The ball goes in, comes back out, moves, a half-second at a time.

Brown had a feeling all along that rampaging unselfishness was the only way to thrive in the NBA. It was the way the Spurs thrived, back when he was assisting Gregg Popovich. But this season, it is working. It’s not difficult to know why. Guesses? Anybody? “I want to say this politely,” Brown said. “We have people now who can finish up.”

Fascinating, huh? Find players who will make shots, and suddenly the passes that come their way are not just lost in a purposeless swirl, but show up under the “A” column in the boxscore. The Sixers are paying Redick $23 million to do what he did Friday, to be open at the end of a string of passes and to make them worthwhile. Embiid, who had been less than over-used for three years, adds a finishing touch. Simmons can score. Covington is trending toward a star at both ends of the floor.

Mix in the bench minutes from T.J. McConnell, whose awareness of open teammates is at the highest level, and the unselfishness grows. Friday, all 10 76ers to play had at least one assist. If anything, Brown’s team occasionally hurls one pass too many.

“That’s a good problem to fix,” Brown said. “Making too many passes is a problem I’d rather have than otherwise.”

He also has a roster he’d rather have than those he was forced to coach when all that processing was occurring. “We have a greater depth in talent,” Brown said, continuing to be tactful, lest anyone think there was a lack of that around the Wells Fargo Center in recent years. “We’ve always prided ourselves on the pass. It’s just that the people are now receiving them and making shots. I said before and said it always: It is the key to the eco-system of the team. You better have a team that shares. Because the ripple effects when you don’t share and are selfish are felt on the defensive end also.

“I’m proud of those numbers. And we do take pride over the years in those numbers. The point is we now have different people receiving the passes. And I think there is a better familiarity of it with our structure, which puts people in a more comfortable environment.”

Simmons delivered 11 assists Friday. With his 12 points and 11 rebounds, he became the first player since Oscar Robertson to have two or more tripledoubles in his first nine NBA games. Pretty impressive environment. He is a remarkable point guard, and Friday he dictated the flow of the game, from the defensive boards to the spin of the offense.

“That’s the way we’re playing,” Simmons said. “We are playing to win. And we are playing to get the right shots. It’s one of those things where you see somebody do it, and everybody gets affected by it. And we get our best shots.”

It’s simple. And in a blink, for the Sixers, it’s working.

To contact Jack McCaffery, email him at jmccaffery@21stcenturymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @ JackMcCaffery