Coach With The Keys
Finally, Brown gets to control Sixers’ future
CAMDEN, N.J. » Sam Hinkie made Brett Brown effectively dump a season, then did something even more harsh. He made him try to fit Jahlil Okafor into his offense.
Bryan Colangelo saw some progress, believed it to be of his own magical basketball touch, then imagined something grand. So that was him last year, mangling the NBA draft to force Markelle Fultz on his head coach.
That’s how the Sixers have operated through a process as haphazard as it was unholy. They just tried to acquire players, no matter how unlikely they were to ever matter in their head coach’s system.
Brown prefers, or rather demands that his forwards can stretch. Even with his many inside moves and mystical ability to finish from two inches from the basket, Okafor was ineffective from three inches away. For that, Brown took a modest look, then ultimately buried the No. 3 overall pick in the draft behind Richaun Holmes, who was selected 34 spots later.
Perhaps influenced by what he’d read
on social media, Colangelo decided that Fultz would be the perfect complement to Ben Simmons. And since Simmons had yet to kneel at one NBA scorer’s table at that point, he had to consider Fultz an alternative, So with Danny Ainge on the other line, cupping the speaker so he couldn’t be detected snickering, Colangelo was twisted into trading up in the draft for Fultz, allowing the Celtics to grab Jayson Tatum at No. 3.
Not only couldn’t Fultz play at the NBA level, when he tried, he was a timid dribbling addict horrifically unsuited to Brown’s half-second rule, the one that commands players to make instant pass-shoot-or-drive decisions. So, after giving him the courtesy of some looks late in the season, Brown had seen enough by the playoffs and stationed Fultz at the Jerryd Bayless end of his bench.
That Brown would so publicly share a bench with Colangelo’s invention during the playoffs was, in itself, a nose-thumb at a ruling family. For it was Colangelo’s father, Jerry, who’d made Brown suffer the professional indignity of having Mike D’Antoni sit beside him with everything but a lifeguard whistle.
Brown, though, eventually won the long fight, the one in which he never really blinked. Though he tactfully said most of the proper things about Okafor and Fultz, and of other offense-slowing, over-valued draft-day acquisitions like Nerlens Noel and Michael Carter-Williams, his actions always said more. He couldn’t win with Noel, Okafor or Fultz, no matter how many bobblehead nights the marketing department would plan. So he tried to win his way. By last season, he did, collecting 52 victories. And plenty of his postgame press conferences were attended by goo-goo-eyed Josh Harris, who often seemed mesmerized by Brown’s deep grasp of the fundamental truths of the modern NBA game, including the need for position-less players, ballmovement and defense.
Maybe it took a miniscandal for the inevitable to happen, Bryan Colangelo being linked to his wife’s multiple anonymous Twitter accounts, some of which spilled sensitive, inhouse content and opinion. But within minutes after Colangelo was shooed out of Camden, there were two, just two, individuals at the explanatory press conference: Harris. And, at his right hand Brown.
So there it was: Brett Brown had made it to where he needed to be all along. He would be in charge of at least one draft, the one to be held Thursday, the one where the Sixers own the No. 10 and No. 26 overall picks.
“We feel that Brett was the right person for that,” Harris said, “with everything he’s achieved.”
He’s the only person for that at this point in the process. Finally, he can pick the players he knows will fit into his system, not those appointed by the draft-a-razzi and blindly bought by one general manager with no basketball sense and another who needed family connections to bump high into the industry.
“We have the power,” Brown said, “to not miss a beat.”
He has the opportunity, at least. And while he is less than deeply experienced in draft-day maneuvering, Brown is surrounded by enough able aides to make an effort to fit his roster with the ideal player. He has the chance to bundle those two firstround picks, or more, for the right to inch up and select University of Missouri non-position-player Michael Porter Jr. At 6-10, with an even longer wingspan, Porter will be the NBA’s next superstar, for he is where the sport is trending. With the athletic ability to switch everything at the defensive end, he would relieve Brown from the agony of re-living the recent Eastern Conference semifinal series when too many Sixers were too slow to switch against the Celtics.
Because of back surgery, Porter played only three games at Missouri. And there were some pre-draft whispers about a hip issue. That’s why he will not be the top overall pick. But that’s why a good (interim) general manager of a good team can aggressively design a value play. Porter is not just what the Sixers need, he is the ideal fit for the system of the head coach with all the power in his organization.
So Brown must try to make that move. Maybe it won’t be possible. If so, he can stay at 10 and choose 6-7 Miles Bridges of Michigan State. Like Porter, Bridges has the skill to defend from multiple positions and is enough of a shooter to fit nicely into Brown’s ball-movement offense. At Pick 26, Brown should think about Villanova winner Jalen Brunson as a possible future point guard if, as he truly believes, Simmons is destined at some point to play more up front.
Brown will have options. At this point in the process, he deserves some. At this point, he deserves to leverage them his way.