NBA
NBA AM: Brown Shedding “Loser” Label

Brett Brown is a loser.
Thatโs what the numbers say, anyway.
No head coach in the NBA over the course of the last three years has lost more games than Brown has in Philadelphia, yet because of the circumstances, all that losing has come with an incredible amount of patience. In fact, Brown is widely considered to be an excellent coachโone of the many promising offshoots of the Gregg Popovich Coaching Treeโbut he hasnโt been given much to work with during his first three seasons with the Sixers.
That, of course, has changed this year, as Philadelphia is just two games shy of tying Brownโs season record for wins, and thereโs still almost half a season to go. In a lot of ways, he has turned the corner with his organization, and it has everything to do with the quality and growing experience of his young core.
โThey work hard. They really believe that good days add up,โ Brown said before Sunday nightโs loss to the Chicago Bulls. โI respect their professionalism, how they come into a gym, how they come into the weight room, how they come into a weight session, how they let me coach them. They are a good groupโฆ Collectively you get punched around at the start of the year and we all take our hits, but nobody caves in. Nobody pivots into a different direction. What weโre doing now, we did in training camp. There are no new players, no new plays. I think they just really believe theyโre getting better, and wins along the way validate that belief.โ
Those wins havenโt gone to anybodyโs head, however. Despite the teamโs recent success, they still are 12 games below .500 and a full five games out of the playoff picture. Brown understands the team still has a ways to go. He also appreciates the challenge of balancing the progress associated with winning and the struggles that come with developing young talent.
โWeโre in the infant stages of figuring out what people can do,โ he admitted. โI walk this line in Philadelphia of trying to develop our guys, of experimenting with rotations and trying to win. These things donโt coexist. They are sort of mutually exclusive. They donโt overlap. As far as when have we arrived? Weโre a long ways in my eyes away from doing what I want to do and what we want to do as an organization. We want to be among the annually-elite teams in the NBA, and that takes a lot. Itโs a well-administered league, itโs a well-coached league, and it certainly is a well-played league. Itโs still a very distant feeling.โ
In the meantime, heโs tasked with bringing along his youngsters, wins be damned.
โThereโs no book that tells you how to [balance everything],โ he said. โWeโre still in a development phase. Thatโs still part of my job. When I see Robert Covingtonโs growth, T.J. McConnellโs growth, I feel like weโre achieving the broad-based goal that the organization has set out.โ
Even though thereโs still so much work to be done, Brown believes his team is starting to understand what it takes to be the elite team he believes they can be.
โI tell our guys all the time: you start looking at those guys who are walking off the court on June 17th, and youโre just blown away at what you really have to do to be the last man standing. Everything we talk about in Philadelphia is about playoff mentality, playoff preparation, and itโs to harden our guys and to remind them, this is where we want to get to.โ
In the meantime, Brown continues to take an incredible amount of pride in the work heโs doing with what has been the leagueโs worst team over the last three seasons. This is a job that would have broken many other men, and so many other coaches would have quit or been fired after the first year or two. Somehow, Brown continues on, and heโs a good enough coach to deserve the turn heโs starting to see in Philadelphia. We should all be so lucky to feel the same tangible success in our own careers.
โYou didnโt take this job to build your coaching record. You took it for a whole different set of circumstances,โ he said. โI have learned since coaching in Philadelphia, we are able to hold a locker room and survive the abundance of losses. People think the plan was hard, but it actually was kind of easy. I was able to tell the guys candidly, we will get better. We will develop you. We will care for your future, and weโre going to help grow you guys. You may not be here a long time, but in the time that youโre here youโre going to get our best effort and opportunity.
โWhen guys look around and they wonder about their own future, and they wonder whether or not theyโre going to be a part of it when this thing finally kicks in, I feel very transparent and candid with my players. I donโt know whatโs going to happen, but I do know that when youโre with me and youโre with us, weโre going to give you our A-plus effort. Weโre going to give you everything weโve got to make you better and teach you the lay of the land. Let me coach you, let me help you get to wherever youโre going to be, and that has helped me hold the locker room together through these difficult years of losing.โ
The losses are fewer and farther between, and the future looks even brighter than the present. Brown may technically have been a loser for three seasons while Sam Hinkieโs โprocessโ got underway, but with new management in Philadelphia and now plenty of talent, the tides are turning.
Frankly, Brown deserves to see some success after those first three dismal years with the Sixers.
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