Words paint his points
Brown’s creative lexicon inspires 76ers’ success
PHILADELPHIA – 76ers coach Brett Brown has a way with words.
When he describes how he wants the basketball moving on offense, he says he wants it going from player to player “like popcorn popping.”
When two teams are too friendly on the court, he says they’re out there “brother-in-lawing with each other.”
When he wants reporters to understand the essence of an answer, he says, “What you should hear the loudest ...”
Descriptive. Concise.
“At this stage of my life, I value my voice because I’m worried my voice isn’t as important as it once was,” the 57-year-old said in an interview with USA TODAY. “I have assistants, but when I speak, I try to get to the point. Less is more. How do I say it? You say it. If ‘popcorn popping’ is the way I want to say it, I say it. That works for me at this stage of my life.”
If you listen to Brown’s news conferences frequently, you pick up on his sayings. They’re not as much aphorisms in John Wooden fashion but more locutions, a particular form of expression or peculiarity of phrasing.
Sixers guard JJ Redick calls them Brett Brown-isms, and Brown has a bunch of them. Some are borrowed from previous coaching stops. Some he co-opted from places he lived. Some he invented, which reveal not only a basketball philosophy but a life
philosophy, too.
“It’s very effective,” Redick said. “There’s a clear vernacular that we use that’s on our scouting report and is detailed in any film we watch. He uses the same verbiage. There’s uniformity, so there’s no confusion if we’re talking about something. One of the things he loves about basketball is that it’s a team sport and any component of our game that emphasizes that, he’s into it.”
The Sixers hired Brown in 2013 following his 11-year stint as an assistant for Gregg Popovich’s Spurs. After guiding the Sixers through difficult seasons as they embarked on “The Process,” Brown now is enjoying success.
Philadelphia reached the second round of the playoffs last season behind young stars Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons and the veteran Redick, and this season the Sixers are 18-9 and just acquired All-Star Jimmy Butler in a trade with Minnesota.
There usually are stories behind his phrases. Such as the ball moving like popcorn popping. Brown loves making popcorn and still has a hot-air popper.
“First, it’s healthy and it gets done in
2 1⁄2 minutes. That thing gets going, pop, pop, pop. We have popcorn a lot to this day in our house. When I coach offense — and we led the NBA in passing last season — you have to get that thing moving. It’s popcorn popping.”
Here are some of Brown’s other unique sayings:
❚ Vision trumps all senses. “Because I’ve coached so many different places, different countries, leagues, college, FIBA, Olympics, NBA, my son’s young teams, that words are interpreted differently whether it’s a language barrier or phrasing, so vision trumps all senses. When they see it, I feel they have a better chance to do it. And then you can repeat it and correct it.”
❚ Paint to great. That phrase is an evolution of Popovich’s “good to great” where one pass turns a good shot into a great shot. Brown took it a step further. “Getting the ball into the paint is what we want,” Brown said.
❚ Guard the yard. Literally, make sure you’re within a yard of the player you’re defending. “I took that from Pop. That’s a Spurs heist, and it made sense.”
❚ Gamify. The word wasn’t in the dictionary until 2010, but Brown loves to use it. In practices, he wants to make a game out of a drill, such as rebounding or deflected passes, to increase compe- tition. “Competition drives everything. Things that have time and score and you win or you lose and the winner gets a reward and the loser gets some level of punishment matter. The thing I miss the most when I stop coaching are relationships and competition. If I value something, say offensive rebounding, I’m going to gamify it through video, charts, messaging, texting. You try to zoom in on what matters most, what’s most important.”
❚ The gym is our compass. “You’re always aware of your compass. I had met someone in Great Barrier Reef, a European guy, and he used the phrase in different ways, but it means, where am I? It equaled where am I going? It equaled some recognition of where in the world you are. For me, where are we in the gym. The gym is my compass. That’s the origin.”
Australia is an important part of Brown’s story. You can even hear a bit of Australian accent mixed with his Boston accent — “Bostralian.”
After college, Brown worked in telecommunications, earned money and made solid investments. But he realized he didn’t want to “put on a shirt and tie” for work the rest of his life. So he quit his job and moved to Australia, where he lived for 17 years.
“I have no idea what I want to do, so I traveled all over the South Pacific. Fiji, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia. Met my wife,” Brown said.
Trading corporate life for some of the world’s best beaches and scenery, he also started coaching basketball, nearly
15 seasons in Australia’s pro league. He spent time as assistant and head coach for Australia’s national team.
Brown’s time overseas has given him a world perspective.
“I live on BBC World News more than I do Fox or CNN,” he said.
Brown, a native of Maine who spends time there in the offseason where he can fly-fish in the deep woods, tries to set aside at least 15 minutes a day to read, watch or listen to something that strikes him. He will watch a Ted Talk or visit Curiositystream.com. He just watched a Netflix documentary on minimalists and is reading “When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing.”
“I’m inherently curious,” Brown said. “Part of it is because I lived overseas for
17 years. You realize it’s a big world. So much of it is governments and politics and natural disasters and cultures and religions, you just pay attention. It really interests me. I have a very long bucket list. I just think reading and paying attention and trying to improve yourself interests me.”