Brown feels Sixers represent lesson in better chemistry
CAMDEN, N.J. » From the souvenir stands to the TV ratings, from the magazine covers to the way the checks are cut on payday, the NBA exists in many ways to promote individual stars.
From the tip of a game to its final horn, however, pro basketball rewards something else. It rewards, Brett Brown believes, that one element that has defined his 76ers.
“It is increasingly obvious to me that you need a ‘team,’” Brown was saying Saturday after practice. Then he stopped, just for a second or two, to let that idea age.
“I’m purposely pausing,” he informed everyone. “You need to have chemistry, togetherness, a spirit that provides insulation.”
The Sixers had 52 regular-season wins and four more in a recently completed playoff series. So whatever they have has worked. That they had a legitimate MVP candidate and the presumptive Rookie of the Year is proof that they have marquee value. But they have more.
“You’ve had four trips up the floor and four turnovers, what are you going to do now?” Brown said. “You’ve had three ridiculous calls by a ref. What are you going to do now? But we have a team. We have something very unique.
“And you don’t just click your heels in April and make that up and talk about it more sincerely.”
The Sixers spent years, some quite repugnant, building their roster. So it was anything but quick. Then again, they had a team apparently bound for the playoffs in February, yet they, to borrow that phrase, clicked their heels and made it different. Though trade-deadline-time additions Ersan Ilyasova and Marco Belinelli were not meant to be starters, both have been critical players, and each has absorbed minutes that others had been playing.
Belinelli has averaged 30.8 minutes in the playoffs, Ilyasova 27.0. That was playing time effectively lost by Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot and Jerryd Bayless, who at one point were regular-season contributors, but who have not played a postseason shift. Justin Anderson has been a victim of the bench shortening. T.J. McConnell is playing four minutes a game less in the postseason than in the first 82. Markelle Fultz, who grabbed some of McConnell’s late-season minutes, has been benched.
Yet … there is a spirit among the Sixers that is rare for any team, particularly in the pros.
“Ersan and Marco, everybody knows they are great players,” Dario Saric said. “But I think they are very good people. And to put them around the very young group that we have here, it was not surprising that they came here and were accepted. Because they are great people.
“Here, everybody on the staff, the medical staff, everybody, are great. One good point of our organization is the chemistry here. And that is one step toward a successful season.”
That Belinelli and Ilyasova produced as well as they have made their integration into the rotation easier. Ilyasova, who was a Sixer just last season, was bound to mesh nicely back into the group. But the Sixers were just as careful not to make Belinelli feel like an outsider.
“I was really happy to come here,” Belinelli said. “Because I really think this team has something special right now. And I just love to play for Coach Brown, this organization and these fans, and to play with Ben and other guys. It is something good.”
It wasn’t a given, though, that any NBA room would be so welcoming.
“I think it’s normal to be nervous the first day I was here,” Belinelli said. “But after that, the guys on this team were so great that everything was easy for me.”
It was, Brown will insist, by plan.
“You work at it,” he said. “And we worked at it. And the guys are fantastic. So always in games, there is a breaking point in games where somebody’s spirit is going to get punched. And somebody is going home. And you just need it all to get through stuff.
“It’s not any examples to anybody. It’s just a reminder that you better have that. You better have that.”
*** NOTES » All players participated fully in a Saturday practice Brown characterized as “physical,” including Joel Embiid, who wore a mask to protect his healing left orbital bone.