KAWHI CLONE
Brown sees Leonard potential in first-round pick Smith
CAMDEN, N.J. » After his year at Texas Tech, a couple of intense workouts with the Sixers and all the usual NBA scouting routines, Zahir Smith essentially was reduced Friday to a two-word, Brett Brown scouting report.
“Kawhi,” Brown said, “Leonard.”
He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t mumble. The 76ers’ coach didn’t immediately attempt to walk it back, like that time Ben Simmons bristled when called a developing power forward. No, at a day-after-the-draft get-together at the Sixers’ training complex, Brown likened the Sixers’ effective first-round draft choice, a 6-4 backcourt project from Texas Tech, the 16th overall pick, to one of the top five players in the sport.
So how did 15 other teams miss that?
How did 15 other teams not see Leonard’s potential in Smith? Was it just because Leonard is a 6-7 small forward with an ability to match up with Kevin Durant, and Smith is a 6-4 college power forward destined to become a defense-first NBA guard? Kawhi Leonard? Really? “I’m sure if I dug back, I could come up with more,” Brown said. “But that’s the one I am most familiar with.”
Once an assistant in San Antonio and a text-every-day close friend of Gregg Popovich, Brown has a familiarity with all-thingsSpurs. He has even dropped vague hints that the 2021 first-round pick the Sixers gained by trading their No. 10 overall pick, Mikal Bridges, to Phoenix for Smith could be used in a trade package for a star. With Leonard likely to be traded, that was not a difficult code to crack.
But whether the Sixers trade for him or not, Brown insists he has acquired a player with the
potential to, like Leonard, grow from an inside player to a perimeter force.
“Can it be done?” Brown said. “Is it a hard transition? At times, it is. But I think we all look at college basketball and say, ‘He’s a power forward and guarded centers.’ And it’s like, ‘Zhaire guards fourmen.’ I don’t even judge college basketball to be positions, really. I think there are a lot of athletes that a coach says, ‘You guard the four-man, so I guess you’re a four.’ It’s true: Zhaire did have more of an interiorrelated skill package that we’ve seen progressively grow up to a perimeter-type package. We think he can keep growing in that direction. And we feel good that with his work ethic and his current package that we can grow that and it will be more of an NBA-perimeter skill package.”
So that’s the Sixers’ story, formally presented: The player they wound up with in the first round of the draft can transition to a wing and develop into a pro-basketball star. But Smith took only 40 threepointers in 30 college games while playing inside.
Was he simply mis-used at Texas Tech?
“I was a natural rebounder,” Smith said. “My college coach told me to crash the boards every time, and if not I was going to have to do running or something. So I crashed about 70 percent of the time. I am good at it, and if a team needed me to crash to boards to win, then I would do that.”
There is a value to a player’s willingness to do as asked. And the Sixers, as with much of the NBA, are trending rapidly toward a positionless game. So Smith’s ability to play in multiple spots can be an asset. But it was notable, if not startling, that Brown so quickly nominated him as a Kawhi Leonard knock-off,
even with his knowledge that Leonard has been an NBA champion and a twotime first-team All-NBA performer.
Rightly or not, from the minute that K-word slipped from Brown’s mouth Friday, Smith was destined to hear it for years. But give Smith this: He didn’t reject the idea.
“It makes me feel great,” Smith said. “That’s one of my favorite players. I watched him growing up. So that’s a good comparison.”
••• The Sixers completed the draft with guard-to-be Zhaire Smith, point guard Landry Shamet and second-round pick Shake Milton from SMU.
All three can fill the role as a complement to unique point guard Ben Simmons. Then again, wasn’t that why the 76ers drafted Markelle Fultz last year? And doesn’t that indicate that they are tiring of waiting for Fultz to play to his draft pedigree?
“No, it doesn’t,” Brown said. “It’s a fair question. But when we started looking at the players available to be sandwiched in between Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid, we’re looking for that modern-day type of player. I just think that the skill and things that we require, these two (Smith and Shamet) have. And whether that is Markelle or T.J. (McConnell) or Robert Covington, I would tell you the same thing.
“The league switches defensively a lot. The league drives, dishes and needs three-point-makers and playmakers a lot. What you should hear the loudest is that there is not overlap. I think they can play together.”
Brown said he was uncertain if Fultz would play for the Sixers in a summer league. Shamet and Smith will participate.
“In my career at Wichita State, I could play multiple roles and do things for a team to win,” he said. “I don’t care. Whatever it is, I am willing to do it.”