Elton still tours for Sixers ... only without the glamour
A former NBA All-Star and No. 1 pick, Elton Brand builds a career as GM of the 87ers in G League
NEWARK, DEL. » The Delaware 87ers were about to travel to Virginia for a preseason scrimmage, and that meant the general manager had to make the arrangements. At that level, the NBA’s G League, the general manager always makes the arrangements.
“Parking passes, and who gets them,” Elton Brand was saying the other night. “Do we have access to the internet in the building? Community relations. The press. Where can the players get 10 percent off when they buy something? Telling them where they can do that. Monitoring the players’ minutes. Having Furkan Korkmaz assigned.
“Everything. All the way up. And all the way down.”
Brand has been all the way up in basketball, twice an NBA AllStar, once the No. 1 overall pick in a draft, once the signer of a contract so rich from the Sixers that he is known to be a man of substantial wealth and a Main Line lifestyle. But there he is in basketball’s minor league, in his first year as a general manager. And there he was before that scrimmage, looking at that long vehicle and the longer ride ahead. “Yes,” he said. “The bus.” Brand played at Duke and then for 17 years in the NBA. If he took a bus at either of those places, it was to the airport, and more specifically, to that part of the airport where the charter flights depart. That’s about it. He does remember taking a train to New York when he was a 76er. “Even then,” he said, “it was in a private car, just for us.”
He’s 38, and he is trying something. So he is trying it all.
“It is what it is,” he said. “I took the bus to the game, three or four hours. It wasn’t bad. We got some sandwiches and some bagels. We made it work.”
There is no direct path to what Brand would like to become, which is a significant decisionmaker at the NBA level. One thing is certain, though: Just having been a great player doesn’t guarantee success. Isiah Thomas was a disaster. Larry Bird? Average. Jerry West? Perhaps the best general manager the league has ever enjoyed. So it’s like free throws. Some swish, others clank. As for Brand, he will take his shot.
“That’s where I am now,” he said, before a light crowd entered the Bob Carpenter Center at the University of Delaware, for the 87ers’ game against the Windy City Bulls. “I am really enjoying this. I am really enjoying this now.”
That’s how it seems. Since there are few, if any, other Hall of Fame candidates likely to pop through the G League, Brand is met nightly with autograph and photo requests. Always accommodating as a player, he works the crowd with his customary grace. He does the same with the coaching staff and the players.
“He is great to work for,” said Eugene Burroughs, the 87ers’ coach. “He’s a really good guy, a genuine guy. He has a great way about him. He’s never too emotional, never too low. He’s very even-keeled.”
That attitude became necessary as the Sevens struggled to win games. That could be the price for the Sixers having so many young players on their roster instead of with the development team. Or it could be that the Sevens, who also have a connection to the Washington Wizards, just have the wrong mix.
To solve that recently, Brand used his deep reach into basketball to contact the agent for former Sixer Christian Wood, who was in China and considering a move to Europe. Brand used his charm and whatever cash and opportunities he could offer, and there was Wood, careening back to the fringes of an NBA operation.
“I had to say, ‘Let’s figure out a way to win games here,’” Brand said. “So that’s what I did. It’s good to have those relationships.”
He has relationships with players, and they are real, and they are current. It was just last season that he was still with the Sixers in training camp. That was him on the floor at Stockton when Ben Simmons broke his foot. And that was him during a recent Sevens practice, teaching the players how to defend in the post.
That recent attachment to the NBA is a value, Brand believes. But, in some ways, it becomes a stress point.
“It’s a little lonely at this position,” he said. “I can’t get too chummy with the players. When I go there and I am in a suit and tie, it is almost like the players are looking at me like I am on the other side now. But I understand it. That’s life. It’s my job. And it’s warranted.”
Brand didn’t need to take the Sevens job. He had opportunities in TV. He had an offer to become an assistant coach, he said, with an NBA Eastern Conference team. He doesn’t need the money. But he said he studied some business at Duke and always had an urge to dabble in the executive world. That he could do that in basketball by guiding the Sixers’ minor-league operation was an appealing mix.
“We are thrilled that Elton has agreed to take on the GM position of the Sevens, a natural next step given both his personal and professional skillset,” said Sixers president Bryan Colangelo at the time. “The transition from a terrific playing career to team management was something that we have been talking about for some time and this opportunity is both timely and appropriate.”
While Brand is willing to eat box lunches on long bus rides and lure players home from China and sign both contracts and autographs, he is not necessarily committed to any particular career path. He would like to rise in the basketball industry. But in his game, every play has options.
“It’s not a ‘time’ thing with me,” he said. “I don’t know how long it would take to get to that next level. But I am with the Sixers and I am in those high-level meetings with the owners, the board meetings, and I am in Bryan Colangelo’s office hearing all the stuff that is going on, sometimes I say, ‘I don’t need all that pressure.’ But at some point I may want it. It is not a foregone conclusion. I may want to stay at this level or take the skills that I am learning and transition to something else.
“I could do yoga and ride my bike, like I was doing.”
Until then, he will pedal as fast as he can and try to twist the 87ers into a better basketball team.
“We mess around,” Burroughs said. “I tell him, ‘You’re going to be the first player-GM in the G League.’ He still can play. It would be great to see him out there to play the game. But I think he is enjoying his new role. I think when you do anything new, you are always adapting to it. So he is adapting to the other side of it.
“He’s learning it. And he is going to be great.”