Next coach will inherit an ill-conceived core
The 76ers had not yet begun their 2019-2020 training camp, but already Brett Brown was sending out distress signals.
Camouflaged in wellthought-out talking points at a downtown Philadelphia bistro, where the press had been gathered to be fed more than a tasty lunch, Brown’s wails were easy to hear. He knew he would be forced to coach an NBA team ill-constructed for the third decade of the 21st century, yet he knew he had tickets to sell and egos to soothe and a sales pitch to concoct.
So he went to work.
Three-point shooters? Who needs ‘em?
“Are we going to be cast as a team that takes a bunch of threes?” Brown said. “That’s not our identity. But I think we’ve got the capabilities of shooting the ball.”
Not their identity? In 2019? How did that happen, just two years after winning 52 games with J.J. Redick, Ersan Ilyasova,
Robert Covington and Marco Belinelli tormenting opponents from distance? How did that happen when Brown was so successful in his halfsecond rule, the one that demanded his players make a play or find an open shooter at once, in the old San Antonio style?
It happened because the
front office, and in particular Elton Brand, had fit him with a plodding team built around two centers, Joel Embiid and Al Horford, at a time in basketball history when the position was being de-emphasized. So Brown, the loyal employee who had been made to excuse everything from a repugnant loseto-win rebuilding plan to Markelle Fultz’s lack of talent, would come up with another pip. Maestro?
“You should write this with a really thick crayon,” Brown said. “And hear me loudly: We will end up playing smash-mouth offense and bully-ball defense. We have the team that can do that.”
So that was what Brown was saying, back in September, at 58 years old with a managing partner already making faces over his lack of a third-round postseason appearance. Think about it: The Sixers wouldn’t shoot the ball well, but darn it, they would smash and bully their way to NBA fulfillment.
He tried, the man did. He tried to succeed as a head coach in an organization that made it virtually impossible, first forcing him to coach three years’ worth of what he’d call NBA “gypsies” then re-imagining a roster every time there was an offseason, a trade deadline or a general manager’s whim.
By the time the longest NBA season was over, Brown was right. The Sixers still couldn’t shoot. But he was wrong, too, because they didn’t bully anyone. In the end, the only thing that was smashed was his coaching career, which ended Monday with a four-paragraph press release and some trite praise from Brand and Josh Harris.
Brown knows how it works. And that was seven years he was given, a fair opportunity to push the Sixers into the NBA elite. If he didn’t have to work for one general manager who didn’t have the courage to trust his own evaluation skills, another who was allegedly ripping his best player with a burner social-media account, and a third who felt three-point shooters were luxuries in 2020, he may have had more success. But he’ll roll on, coach Australia in the 2021 Olympics, resurface as an NBA assistant and take the traditional spin through the head-coaching recycling machine.
As for the Sixers, they will not as easily be cleansed. They have too much money invested in Tobias Harris, who never should have been a max player, Al Horford, whom the Celtics couldn’t wait to get rid of so they could give the money to Kemba Walker, Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons, who is uncoachable and can’t shoot. Their bench has no value beyond Matisse Thybulle’s defense. And Embiid is brittle and often exhausted.
Other than it being one of only 30 NBA jobs, and thus by definition appealing, the Sixers’ job offering is not great. Perhaps Josh Harris can pay Tyronn Lue to replace Brown. But who could blame the former Cavs coach, with a strong reputation for his leadership and bench skills, if he would rather coach Zion Williamson in New Orleans? Jason Kidd is available and could be a role model for Simmons. But he has had five years as a head coach and never made it past the second round. Sound familiar?
Villanova coach Jay Wright would be popular. But do the Sixers want a second consecutive coach with no NBA playing experience? And after seeing the stress John Beilein, with a resume not too dissimilar to his, just went through in Cleveland, would Wright want to jump to a pro team in need of some rebuilding?
The Sixers have issues. And since Brand will do a Zoom press conference Tuesday, it looks like he is going to be allowed to try to solve them. The question: Will he look for a coach able to win without three-point shooting and a roster built to smash and bully in an era when that no longer works?
Brown never hesitated to pull a player from his rotation. So it’s his turn to take a seat for a while. It’s possible a new voice can help. But if so, the Sixers should make it a real voice, one unwilling to capitulate to unproven sports scientists, one able to tell Simmons he is not the only All-Star in history, one open to demanding more from a front office, one secure enough in his profession not to be made to settle for mandated losing.
Brown knew all of that was about to be a problem this season. He tried to pretend otherwise. He was a pro that way. But he knew. All it should have taken was listening to that preseason wail.