With the Philadelphia 76ers magic number down to ONE, the team will finally deliver a playoff appearance to head coach Brett Brown
The Philadelphia 76ers hired head coach Brett Brown in August 2013. That was nearly five years ago. At the time, nobody had very high expectations for the team. No young talent, no salary cap, and the cupboards were bare of draft picks. Still, the team had a plan to kick over every rock for young talent in search of three elite players. And the team needed the right head coach to develop them all, but be able to pick out the transcendent players. Coach Brown was uniquely qualified to do both.
He came to the Philadelphia 76ers as the top assistant coach to San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich. But as he arrived, even his demi-god patience was pushed to its limits. He led the team to 19, 18, 10, 28, and now 41 wins respectively. But the Philadelphia roster did not begin to have a cohesiveness of a true NBA team until the 2016-2017 season. That is the year both Dario Saric arrived to the NBA and Joel Embiid returned to health after two years recovery from foot surgery.
Brown tainted by losses
But while everyone “understood” the conditions of the Philadelphia 76ers, that does not insulate Brown from the taint of coaching a losing team. Even this season, as he worked hard to develop one of the youngest but most talented teams in the NBA this season, fans routinely call for his job at each loss.
But it was Coach Brown who talked to the media. It was Brown who mentored his young NBA players, only to say goodbye to them as the talent level improved. Brown was their mentor. Their life advisor. He was their lifeline to their NBA dreams. But most of all, he was friend to each player. Each player discharged from the team took away a piece of Brown with him. And in the 10 win season, we began to wonder how much more Coach Brown could give away.
Coach Brown became “McGyver” in lean years
The Philadelphia 76ers, for those who are just now coming on board, was a mess. At times the team had no definable point guard due to injury. So Brett Brown coached up tall prospect Jakarr Sampson from shooting guard into point guard on the fly. It was that experience which allowed the Philadelphia 76ers to project Ben Simmons to the NBA as a point guard.
But that one-on-one crash course linked Brown to Sampson for life. Even now, he occasionally mentions Sampson.
About JaKarr Sampson, Brett Brown says it's "like you're going to see someone you raised."
— brianseltzer (@brianseltzer) March 23, 2016
And the team did the same thing at the power forward position. Oh, and Coach Brown developed Robert Covington into a two-way player. In short, raw talent arrived to the Philadelphia 76ers. But it has been Coach Brown who shaped them all into the NBA players they are today.
The future
2016 was such an important season to the team in many ways. The team not only claimed both Saric and Embiid, but Coach Brown had the chance to witness Saric on the Croatian National Olympics team. It was that experience which re-enthused the 2013 hire to his goal of forging a cohesive team from such lofty but raw players. No other coach could do it, because no other coach understood the gauntlet each player had to go through to get there.
Through it all, Coach Brown was the optimist. The “Good Cop” version of an NBA head coach. And until recently, I always had a question of his toughness. Could he buckle this team down when they got good? And just recently, I learned that he could. Coach Brown read the team the riot act to pull them out of the lethargy of playing down to weaker teams. Until now, the players needed buoyancy. As the team nears the playoffs, they need a fire-and-brimstone version of head coach, and Brown delivered.
Brown deserves this playoff appearance.
Head coach Brett Brown deserves the NBA Coach of the Year award, but he won’t get it. The NBA will not allow Brown to be recognized for his achievements, as he was hired by Sam Hinkie, a team president who shook up the establishment. But don’t be fooled by the official NBA rhetoric. No coach could do so much with so little. Sure, there are talking heads who will feign offense at a team with no positive options, suddenly reemerging as a true NBA playoff team. And there is the rub. Despite all the claims of “they never will!”? They are.
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Led by Coach Brown, these Philadelphia 76ers are guaranteed a non-losing NBA season. Despite the claims that the NBA Eastern Conference is “that bad”, this team is just one game behind the lauded Cleveland Cavaliers for the 3-seed. And with the Philadelphia 76ers win over the Orlando Magic, and the Piston loss to the Houston Rockets, the team’s magic number is down from 3 to 1. One win or one Piston loss away from a guaranteed playoff appearance. Finally, all the players, fans, and team members reap the benefits of such a long arduous climb. But no one deserves this more than head coach Brett Brown.