McCaffery: Brown still bouncing with pressure
CAMDEN, N.J. >> Brett Brown watched the final shot of the Sixers’ season hit the rim once, then twice, then three times, then four, hoping for one thing, aware of the possibility of the other.
“Seemed like it took a month,” he said.
Basketball can be that way, thrilling at times, maddening at times, the next emotion only a bounce away. Not that Brown was shocked, for no one who has been around the game as long as he has could be surprised by much, but Kawhi Leonard’s shot eventually dripped into the net and the Sixers’ season was over.
All that was left was the blame. And Brown knows where that usually falls in a league where coaches are bounced every year.
“I’m the son of a coach,” Brown would say, days later. “I am the fifthlongest tenured coach in the NBA. And I know, coaching doesn’t happen for always. Coaching doesn’t happen forever.”
Brown was at the Sixers’ training center Tuesday on the morning after a car service had transported him to Manhattan, then back, for a dinner and a handshake with Josh Harris. Though signed to coach the Sixers through 2022, Brown is ever aware that his employment is only guaranteed until Harris stashes a buyout check in his shirt pocket.
Long before dinner Monday, Brown was aware that he would not be fired, not after winning 51 regular-season games in a season of dramatic personnel upheaval, not after a strong showing in a playoff series against Brooklyn, and certainly not because one of the great NBA players had just eliminated the Sixers with a four-carom horn-beater. He knew that when Harris told him as much before the Toronto series. Everyone else knew it earlier Monday when several players went before the press and said, almost as if in a chorus, that Brown would coach the Sixers “for a long time.”
Such consistent, almost scripted thought doesn’t happen by accident. The players were told what was happening, not that it should have been an issue. But it was an issue, because Harris made it an issue, declining a clear opportunity before the playoffs to commit to Brown past one series, that after a public claim that anything short of postseason improvement over last year would be “problematic.” So when Brown did not coach the Sixers past the Elite Eight for the second consecutive season, Harris was in position to make a coaching change, having provided fair warning.
“You can’t believe what you read,” Harris said, “or are hearing.”
Harris technically never did jam Brown into a win-or-else ultimatum. Neither did general manager Elton Brand. But if Brown wasn’t entirely certain of his job security, why did he call it a “relief” that he would return? “Deeper than a relief,” he said. Why did he say it was deeper than relief?
But OK. Maybe there was some misinterpretation. Maybe Harris fired off signals that he didn’t mean. It can happen. Either way, 2018-2019 is over. Brown will coach in 2019-2020. And if Harris is to be scored on how he handled the situation, then credit him for getting it right.
There is no better head coach for the 76ers, not as a strategist, not as a locker-room manager, not as a representative in the community, not in the way he has helped grow a program, than Brett Brown.
“Brett is our leader going forward,” Harris said.
So forward the Sixers will go, first to the draft, then to the summer league, then to training camp. But then where? Will Harris commit to a forward-march with Brown through the end of his contract?
“We’re very supportive of Brett,” the owner said, when asked that question. “He’s not coaching for his job. When people ask me to get into like a million scenarios, it’s hard to give you an absolute answer. We’re all accountable, all of us. I’m accountable and I get it. Elton is accountable. Brett’s accountable. We’re accountable to the city and to the fans to really bring excellence. But Brett is our coach. He’s our leader and we’re moving forward and very strongly behind him.”
As for Brand, he was a bit more specific.
“I’d like to add to that,” he said. “We’re all going to be evaluated, from top to bottom, including myself, at the end of the season, for sure.”
Brown deserves a chance to have a full offseason, a training camp, and a fair shot to win enough regular season games with his newer nucleus. But if the Sixers don’t advance past the second round in 2020, and if that rotten rebuilding process of theirs is proven incapable of justifying four years of accepted failure, then the annual New York meeting could cost Harris more than a couple of steak dinners.
“It’s my sixth year in Philadelphia,” Brown said. “I have been ‘fired’ in every one of those years. It’s true. It’s Philadelphia. Every single one of those years, somebody has had me not coming back. And it will happen again next year. And early.
“It’s the way it works in our industry and city. But we have the club to deal with this and other things. I am fine with it and we move on. It’s incredible, but it’s how the world we live in works. That’s the way it goes.
“And I am just fine not responding to all that noise that surfaced.”
He doesn’t have to respond with words. He must respond with results. And he responded with enough of them to have earned a seventh year as the Sixers’ coach. That’s how the bounces go, even in a profession that is not forever.