be creative to answer them.
Will the Sixers run into is-
sues when they face smaller,
speedier teams? Can Embiid
fix his late-game conditioning
issues? Can Simmons develop
a passable jump shot? When
the 33-year-old Horford is
alongside those two, will he
able to guard smaller guys on
the perimeter? Can someone replace JJ Redick’s ability to
space the floor and shoot threes? Can Brown come up with
the right lineups? Can this... work?
“I think what it depends on is if everybody fits together,”
Popovich says. “The way the NBA changed, everybody as-
sumes you have to shoot three-point shots all the time and
that there’s no place for a big guy in the game anymore.
But that’s really not true when you look at it really closely.”
It may all come down to Brown’s coaching. He’s proved
that he knows how to teach, how to motivate, how to care
for his players, how to crack the right joke at the right press
conference. But can he win with what he’s built? If he can’t,
he’ll probably lose his grip on the raft and get tossed into
the river. “Everyone has an expiration date,” he concedes.
The Sixers’ season starts Oct. 23. Time to hold on tight. ±59SPORT S ILLUS TR ATED- OC T OBER 21–28, 2019
“The standard is that we want to win a championship,”
Brown says. “So the rules have changed. Last year I had
three iterations of a team. I couldn’t have gone into the
locker room at the start of last year and looked at my team
and said, ‘We’re here to win a title.’ None of us would’ve
believed that was a fair goal. And now it is.”
But the Sixers were contenders last year. They traded for
Harris and Butler. In the offseason, Butler opted to take his
talents to South Beach rather than return to a team with a
better shot of contending. All Brown will say about Butler,
with whom he reportedly clashed, is that he remembers him
for his random acts of kindness. But Brown won’t elaborate
on what those were.
Even without the Butler wrench, how exactly the pieces of
this team will fit together is unclear, because as talented as
the roster is, it’s unlike any before it. Simmons is 6' 10". So
is Horford. Embiid is 7 feet. Harris is 6' 9". Shooting guard
Josh Richardson, acquired from the Heat in the Butler sign-
and-trade, is oversized for a guard.
“I don’t know where the holes are or the mismatches,”
Brown says. “We can play bully-ball offense and smashmouth
defense, and it can easily be flipped, the same words apply:
We’re big. Once you’ve recognized and admitted the design
of team, you can dream. You can get creative.”
But there are still questions, and Brown will have toRAPID DEVELOPMENT
It all started back
home in Maine for
Brown. Over the
summer, he took
his 82-year-old dad
(middle row, right)—
a former high school
coach—rafting.COURTESY OF BROWN FAMILY
BRETT BROWN