Brown not a favorite with dear old dads

PHILADELPHIA >> The 76ers wish two recent situations could have been kept all in the family.

According to a Twitter report from a fan at Saturday’s game in Los Angeles, rookie Jahlil Okafor’s father, Chukwudi, verbally “harassed” Sixers coach Brett Brown, and had to be told by his son to stop doing so.

“I don’t know why you guys are worried about my dad. He’s not in the NBA, (and) he’s not on the team,” Okafor said before Monday’s game against Minnesota. “You’d be better to find something more than my dad to write about. I don’t know what happened.”

Though Brown didn’t address the claims that he had been verbally attacked by Chukwudi, he called Okafor’s father “a good guy.”

“He loves following his son around the NBA,” Brown said. “He gets into as much from a fan perspective as a dad perspective. Emotions run high with him. He’s got a 19-yearold who’s had a lot of accolades come his way early. … I think he loves his son.”

After Saturday’s game, a blowout loss to the Clippers, point guard Kendall Marshall’s father, Dennis, made allegations on Twitter that racism was at the root of his son losing minutes in the team’s rotation.

Dennis has since deleted the tweets, which included: “I always said there was racism in sports. White guys in basketball are getting every chance to succeed even when they aren’t doing (anything).”

Another Dennis the Dad tweet called out Nik Stauskas: “How are you a ‘shooter’ and shooting 27% from three?”

Monday, Dennis Marshall issued an apology to Brown and the Sixers in a statement, saying he was “ashamed and embarrassed by my actions.”

The younger Marshall, declared the starting point guard Dec. 8 by Brown, has since lost playing time to Ish Smith and T.J. McConnell.

As with the situation involving Chukwudi Okafor, Brown downplayed this one, too.

“We all love our children,” the coach said. “I’m the son of a coach. I’ve got a little 11-yearold. Nobody’s overreacting. I spoke to both (Kendall and Dennis) about it. We move on. We love our kids. Sometimes things come out and we move on.”