NBA
PREVIEW
found out his brother had been killed by a reckless driver
in his home country of Cameroon. When rumors swirled
of Brown’s firing last year, Embiid told reporters, “I got a
lot of love for him,” and that if blame were to be assigned,
blame Embiid himself.
T.J. McConnell—who played four seasons in Philly before
signing with the Pacers last summer—remembers one game
from his rookie year when the Sixers were losing to the Spurs
by 50. McConnell wanted to get momentum going, especially
since Popovich (below, with Brown in 2012) was on the other
sideline. So he charged down the court and launched an air-
ball. McConnell was visibly upset on the bench afterwards.
Instead of getting angry, Brown sat down and put his arm
around him. “This happens in the NBA,” McConnell remem-
bers Brown saying. “You’re going to lay an egg.”
“It’s pretty much unheard of, when you hear of a coach
staying with his job for three GMs,” McConnell says. It is,
and Brown has—after Hinkie was fired, Bryan Colangelo
came on board, but he resigned after his wife admitted to
using Twitter burner accounts to leak team info. After Brown
did a stint as interim GM, the Sixers hired
Elton Brand, whom Brown coached in his
third year in Philly.
“I think [his staying power] speaks vol-
umes about who Brett is,” McConnell says.
“He’s so knowledgeable in basketball, and
at the same time he makes sure you’re good
as a person, too.”
But being a good person only gets you
so far. He aced step one of the Process, butand Bo Porter while tanking before hiring
AJ Hinch, who won them a World Series.
In the NBA, Dwane Casey endured 23- and
34-win rebuilding seasons in Toronto,
worked five more years to turn
the Raptors into a consistent
contender... and then
watched from home last
June while his replace-
ment, Nick Nurse, won
the title. The conven-
tional wisdom is that
you need a patient
coach to develop tal-
ent, but someone dif-
ferent to win. This could
be Brown’s last shot to
prove he can do both.“I was at a stage where this was not going to define me,”
Brown says. “I actually loved the challenge of the rebuild. I
saw it clearly. And I love development. I’ve said before, you
can coach under threat or you can coach for the challenge.
The challenge was taking some very young teams and get-
ting your teeth punched in on a nightly basis. The pain of
losing is real. But I felt like it’s something I wanted to be a
part of and help pull this off.”
Hinkie believed that Brown had the perfect experience for
the job. He had been a head coach abroad for 17 years, was
great at developing young talent and had spent 12 years at
the side of a master in the NBA. His New England stoicism
seemed well-suited to endure a rebuild as challenging, long
and lonely as a Maine winter.
“Brett has an everyday optimism to consistently bring
that kind of hope and energy to the staff and to the players,”
Hinkie says. “I knew it was a big asset, but it turned out to
be even bigger than I could’ve guessed. I thought he’d be
great at it—he turned out to be legendary.”
Legendary may sound over-the-top, but Brown was good
at persevering through loss after loss,
including a season where the Sixers only
won 10 games. “They couldn’t have had
anybody better,” says Popovich. “I said a
million times, after one year, maximum
two, they’d have to put me in a strait jacket,
or fire me or get rid of me. No one could
have stayed as positive as he stayed.”
Brown does have a fiery side—just watch
him on the sideline during games—but
through all the losing, he kept a meticu-
lous and patient approach. Then and now,
he reviews film individually with each
player for 12 minutes each on an assigned
schedule. He knows how to motivate. A
few years ago, one player kept shooting
from the wrong spot on the court during
a drill. After about an hour of this, Brown
blew the whistle. Everyone thought he was
about to lose it, but instead, he walked
over to the guy and held him by the waist.
“I’m going to help you, because when
you stand here, you’re pretty good,”
Brown said, then pulled the player four
feet back. “But if you stand here, you’re a
mother------. The NBA can’t f------ pay you
enough. Stand right here, because when
you stand there, no one can guard you.”
Brown does care deeply about his
players—an important trait when your
primary job is developing them. He fa-
mously missed a game against the Celt-
ics in 2014 because he spent the night
at Embiid’s apartment after the center
58SPORT S ILL US TR ATED- OC T OBER 21–28, 2019
BY THE
NUMBERSLosing streaks of
at least 26 games
in NBA history.
Brown’s Sixers were
responsible for two.
(The 2010–11 Cavs
had the other.)Years since the
76ers last had
consecutive 50-win
campaigns before
Brown’s squads
combined for 103 wins
the past two seasons.3
33
LAYNE MURDOCH/NBAE/GETTY IMAGES