Brown doesn’t want to waste ‘royal’ opportunity
PHILADELPHIA >> By February of last season, the 76ers were down to one regular-season goal. They wanted to win home-court advantage for a playoff series. And for that, they likely would have had to be better than the Cleveland Cavaliers.
So it was with the whoosh of a 16-game winning streak and normal advances and retreats in the Eastern Conference that the Sixers would finish two games better than the most consistent, dominating, popular and powerful Eastern Conference operation of their immediate time. Eureka.
Brett Brown wasn’t necessarily thinking about that Friday as he planned to play against the Cavs. But he knew that, so quickly, so much had changed. His Sixers were rising in the East, in first place in the Atlantic Division, prominent among pro basketball’s Beautiful People. And the Cavs were 2-14, on their second coach of the season and looking so much like Brown’s earlier Sixers catastrophes.
Of course, he recognized that once LeBron James left for the Lakers, it would all change. Who didn’t? But the dramatic tumble, the sudden drop from 2016 champions to 2018 NBA finalists to the final team in the NBA with only two wins, did hit home. For it said that, in this sport, in this league, nothing is promised forever.
“It’s a discussion I have all the time with Elton Brand, an incredibly fruitful, natural conversation,” Brown said. “I can have it with one of my former players, with the general manager, with the ownership group. We talk about timelines. What’s the timeline of Ben Simmons? What’s the timeline of Joel Embiid? And so on and so forth.
“And it’s as much now as it is anything.”
Brown wasn’t talking championships, at least not specifically. Nor has he officially declared that to be a reasonable November conversation. January maybe. Later, even.
“Oh I think we can be amongst royalty,” he will say. “I don’t believe we’re playing at a level where we currently are amongst that elite group. And that’s not anything else but time. Give us some time. Ask that question when the second third of the season starts after Christmas, and I can speak to you candidly about how confident, how equipped I feel that I’ve been able to prepare the team to play real basketball.
“At the moment it is not. It is piecemeal-ing things together, as it should be. I think that we have the personnel to compete with the best in the East.”
The Sixers have the personnel to compete with the best in the East. The West, too. And if there were North and South conferences, they would compete there as well. That was their reward for being awful enough to win a chance to draft Simmons, willing enough to draft an injured Embiid and aggressive enough to trade for Jimmy Butler. So it was a bit surprising that Brown, who often uses the royalty description, is reluctant to demand that his players be addressed as Your Majesty. Because, as that crowd that limped into the Wells Fargo Center from Cleveland Friday would show, the opportunity to bask in greatness can quickly vanish.
“I think it is the mindset of all of us that we want to grow, coach, think like that’s the standard,” said Brown, who was professionally educated in San Antonio, a rare situation where the royalty rarely fades. “That’s our litmus test. Everything we think about is driven through, ‘Is that of championship standard?” Fortunately, I’ve lived it four times. So it is not a mystery to what that looks like. I think that mentality is now draped over our organization. And it has to be. This is how we see the world these days.”
Handicapping for a fast track, the Sixers should be regal for a while. Embiid is signed through 2023, Simmons through 2020. Technically, Butler can bolt after this season, but the Sixers would not have traded Dario Saric and Robert Covington without assurance that he would re-up.
But Embiid has played high-level college and pro basketball for five seasons and has yet to finish a regular season healthy. Butler could leave. And for some reason, Brown felt it important to have a sit-down with Simmons after the Butler trade, assuring him that his value as a point guard would grow, not shrink, with the addition of a four-time All-Star. Simmons is about Simmons. And if, at some point, he feels he is a second or third star on a team in a league that celebrates only the best, that eventually could be Brand’s defining challenge.
Though the Sixers had not been dominant, at least not in a Dream Team sort of way, since their acquisition of Butler, they had won their last four. All around, they were better. But they were not yet where Brown wanted. And only he will know when they are.
“When you have a gut feel that as you play other elite teams, Toronto, Milwaukee, the Celtics who will be back, and you feel those teams, and I feel we’re in a rhythm with me coaching and subbing and play-calling, and we have a sting to our defense, I can look at you and say, ‘Yup, here we are, we’re amongst royalty.’ Right now, we just aren’t. It’s not anybody’s fault. But give us time. Give us time. Because I know that we can be.”
They are built for that. Other teams have been built for that too. It comes, it goes. And as soon as possible, it must be maximized.