Brown welcomes advice from an authoritative, familiar source
PHILADELPHIA >> Bob Brown is 79, looks 65, talks basketball like he’s 56. That’s how old his son is, and his son has a job in the basketball business.
“I’m proud of him,” he said.
It works both ways.
Brown was in the Wells Fargo Center Thursday, with his wife Bonny, stopping in the area on the road from a winter home in Florida to the family home in Maine. He would watch the 76ers play the Chicago Bulls, cringing at times, cheering others, beaming always, his son Brett trying to rebuild a franchise.
He was a coach himself for 52 years, mostly in high school, but also in college, including Division I, for years at Boston University. But anymore, he usually just watches games on television with his wife, who often holds a notebook. The notebook is not to take notes, either. It’s to shield her eyes from the bottom of the screen, because she’d rather not be reminded of the score.
“Sometimes I get so mad that I turn off the TV,” Bob Brown said. “But then I have to sneak back. I have to know how they are doing.”
The Sixers haven’t won often since Brett Brown became their coach four years ago, but there are reasons, and it doesn’t take someone in five sports Halls of Fame to realize that. And Bob Brown is in that many, all around New England, he being such a successful coach that Rick Pitino once asked him to share his bench at Kentucky.
For that, Brett Brown is thankful. And it’s the reason he arrived at work a few minutes later than usual Thursday.
“True story,” the Sixers coach said. “I have 80-year-old parents. I’m proud of it. When I was getting ready to come down here — normally, to get here early — there was a tsunami. And I felt guilty: How are they going to get in the building? So we waited. And here I am. True story. Proud son.”
Brown has plenty of coaching help from a deep stable of assistants, and if not, then from 18,000 chirping voices 82 times a year. But he values his father’s opinion … and knows he will receive it, too. By the way: Dario Saric needs better jumpshooting mechanics.
“He’s goes the complete other way of leaving me alone,” Brett Brown said. “He does. The complete other way. Anything, like for instance, ‘Dario’s got to get more air on his shot. He’s got to get more legs. He’s got to push the ball up. He’s shooting darts. It’s too flat.’ Then he’ll be so remorseful that he said it. He just wants to let me coach and leave me alone. He feels there is a lot going on over my time here, and it’s true. But I feel like when he has something, it’s usually spot on. It’s just delivered very, very infrequently.”
That’s why it was noteworthy Thursday, when Brown’s parents swung by on their way home. They would stay only until Saturday, just long enough to catch up, not long enough to go too deep into their son’s professional business.
“He loves it,” Brett said. “And my mom is addicted. My mom watches more NBA than Dad. The best Christmas gift I give them is ‘League Pass.’ It’s true. Mom is a coach’s wife. Her whole life, she’s been a coach’s wife. And it gives them a new, I suppose, angle of excitement. Sometimes misery. And it’s good. ”
Bob Brown is convinced that wintering in Florida officially makes him old. Then again, the Sixers’ rebuilding process would make any true supporter age a little quicker. All he knows — and he won 462 games as a high school coach in Maine — is that his son’s work will be rewarded. Sooner than later, probably.
“He gets mad,” Bob Brown said, of his son, of the losing. “But then he goes to bed. He gets up the next morning and — boom — he’s going ahead. It’s always positive. It’s always going ahead. How does he do it? I couldn’t do it. That’s probably the thing that impresses me the most about what the last four years have been.
“When we sat at opening training camp and Ben Simmons broke his foot, I said, ‘Oh my, here we go again.’ But from that point on, I think everybody saw at points during this season that it was good basketball. It was fun basketball. They looked like, hey, this is a well-organized college team. They don’t care who scores. They just play hard. And that was fun. And I think that most people now are hoping with the injuries and everything taken care of, this is what they’re going to see next year.”
Bob Brown will be 80 then, cruising I-95, catching the Sixers in Boston or Orlando, and, as usual, in Philadelphia, on his way back home.
“More than anything, I’m proud of watching his product on the floor, because it’s not easy with 28 wins to go out there and play with pride and confidence and respect,” Brett Brown’s father said. “I think that’s from him.”
As a father, he would know. As a coach, too.