Philadelphia 76ers coach Brett Brown is constantly lambasted on social media for not being a coach who can lead a team to the NBA championship. However, his assistants have a surprising track record of getting hired for head coaching positions of their own.
If you went to a restaurant and had a miserable time, your first thought afterward probably is not “I really want to hire the assistant manager of this place if I ever buy a restaurant.” However, to a number of Philadelphia 76ers fans and certain members of the media, this is exactly the circumstances involving head coach Brett Brown.
The template among Brown doubters is: every Sixers win is thanks to the talent of its players, every loss is due to Brett Brown not having a clue.
Yet, for some reason, a lot of NBA and college teams want to hire the guys (and one girl) who worked under Brown to become head coaches or received big promotions.
Now, many of them had impressive credentials before being hired by the 76ers, so we are not saying Brett Brown is like Gregg Popovich, having underlings get hired merely because they served under him.
But considering Brown has a losing record (215-340 before the restart at Disney), has never won Coach of the Year, and has not even taken a team to the conference finals, the list of his assistants who have moved up is pretty impressive:
- Lloyd Pierce is the head coach of the Atlanta Hawks
- Mike D’Antoni is the head coach of the Houston Rockets
- Billy Lange is the head coach at St. Joseph’s University
- Ime Udoka is currently the reported favorite to be the head coach of the Chicago Bulls
- Monty Williams is the head coach of the Phoenix Suns
- Lindsey Harding is now a full assistant coach for the Sacramento Kings after being a player development coach for Brown
Now, D’Antoni and Williams had previous experience as successful NBA coaches, so having sat next to Brown at games was probably not a deciding factor. However, being a 76ers assistant obviously did not hurt their chances either.
So there is a major dichotomy when it comes to Brett Brown. To some people, he can’t coach his way out of a paper bag yet a lot of the people surrounding him, who one would assume have influence on his coaching decisions, are all getting snapped up for bigger jobs.
Let us look at some of the reasons for this (all statistics courtesy basketball-reference.com):
1.
Brown is known for his meticulous preparation. He spends hours watching film and talking with his assistants on how to improve the team and on scouting opponents. He also, counting coaches, trainers and administration, in total has about 25 people directly under his authority. How to deal with that is a task in itself. In terms of how a head coach should conduct himself, Brown is certainly someone to emulate.
2.
He is a winner (lately). The NBA is all about W’s. We dump on Brown for not winning the big games but let’s not forget where the Sixers came from to play in big games. Four years ago, the Sixers won a total of 10 games (and it took some trades to even do that) but just two years later, Brown had them in the Eastern Conference semifinals. Since 2017, Brown has a record of 142-87.
3.
The NBA is unquestionably a players league and NBA players like Brett Brown. J.J. Redick has stated a big reason he came to the Sixers was Brett Brown’s reputation. Players talk and the talk about Brown is that he is a good coach to play for (with the obvious exception of Jimmy Butler). A big reason Brown was named interim general manager when Bryan Colangelo left was it would help the 76ers in free agency convince players to come. If a club is worried about how the players will react to a new hire, getting someone who has been around Brown is a plus.
4.
Maybe, just maybe, Brett Brown is not a blithering idiot. In the playoffs, Brown has gone toe-to-toe with two coaches who won NBA championships in Miami’s Erik Spoelstra and Toronto’s Nick Nurse. Against Miami, the 76ers won the series 4-1 and versus Toronto, Brown got a team with no bench, a roster cluttered with four centers he could not play and a sick Joel Embiid within a lucky bounce away from knocking off the eventual NBA champs. When rumors he would get the axe after the Raptors loss bubbled up, to a man (except Butler), all the players sang Brown’s praises as a great coach.
The fact that Brett Brown, himself a branch of the Popovich coaching tree, now has all these former assistants successfully spread around the basketball world is certainly an accomplishment.
Social media is not always a true barometer of public opinion but any check of Twitter or the comments section of sports website show a lot of people not impressed, to say the least, in Brown’s coaching ability.
But to the VIPs in the executive world of the NBA and major college basketball, who do the important hiring and firing… being an assistant to Brett Brown is a good thing.