Cooney: Brett Brown enthusiastic as Sixers camp ends

GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP, N.J. - Following their final practice on Friday, the 76ers will load onto the buses and head back to the Philadelphia area, their four days of training camp at Stockton University a learned memory.

Unlike last year at the same time, coach Brett Brown won't be checking the bottom of his shoes to see whether there is some unwanted collection as he takes his seat at the front of his bus.

He boarded his ride home after training camp last year knowing that a hurricane of bad awaited him. His two top point guards, who were borderline NBA players anyway, weren't going to see action for a couple of more months while recovering from ACL surgery. His two big-man pieces, Nerlens Noel and rookie Jahlil Okafor, bonded on the floor about as well as oil and water. Outside shooting, to be polite, was suspect, and if Brown needed a veteran leader to help him through the season, he might as well have been looking for a championship-contending season.

"So tomorrow we're going to drive back to Philadelphia," Brown said with a sparkle in his eye. "I remember driving back to Philadelphia last year knowing in my heart of heart that this group was going to be challenged."

Translation: He knew they would stink. Maybe not to the tune of the 10 wins they gathered, but he knew they had bottom-of-the-league potential.

"We really didn't know who the point guard was," Brown recalled. "We came in extremely injured. We were trying to make the Nerlens-Jahlil thing work. There really weren't a lot of veterans to look around. And you knew it. This is my 16th year doing this (coaching in the NBA). You can leave and sniff reality. That was a frightening drive home. That drive home scared me, because I knew what we had, and how were we going to be able to maneuver through it?

"Now what I see, there's depth, there's challenges positionally, but there's talent and point guards and it's sprinkled in with some veterans. How we grow it and play it is still on the table. But, to me, it's a completely different feeling . . . what I have now that I did not have last year."

It doesn't take long to walk into the gym, observe the collection of players on the floor and experience a feeling that hasn't been present during Brown's tenure.

Most bodies on the floor are big. Really big. There is an abundance of height and strength and length. The ones who don't catch the eye in that manner do so elsewhere. Sergio Rodriguez has a ballhandling ability that reminds you of a point guard from years ago, when craftiness overruled style. Jerryd Bayless possesses a comfort that comes with having played in the league for eight seasons, and Gerald Henderson is almost parental-like, mature in the effortless way he handles everything.

The environment couldn't be any more different from what it was at this time last year, when Brown buried his head in his hands on the bus ride home. It starts with talent, includes knowledge and is brought together with overall depth.

"I feel like there is such a different allowance, there are different rules when you are talking about offense and defense," Brown said. "Defense is clear. We set it clearly, and it is not negotiable. This is what we do, this is how we guard a post, a pick-and-roll, a pin-down, whatever, and it doesn't change. We just walk something down during the course of the year. It's very accountable. It's not so much that with offense. I want these guys having a freedom and a pace and a flair and figuring each other out. We are very much in an organic stage, where stuff is organically growing, and I'm seeing stuff and they're seeing stuff. There's a freedom that they're playing with, where they're loose and they know they can take risks. And then you go to the defensive side and there's a complete other mentality. Yeah, I want them to play and sort of orchestrate the offense with a level of freedom, and they can do that."

It is a recognition of how much this roster has improved. The coach has players to rely on as veterans, as communicators, and as way better players than he's overseen here.

"It's one of hope," Brown said, describing the feeling as camp breaks. "You see clarity of what the foundation is. This drive home (Friday) also coincides with driving into a new practice facility for our first practice. I think that our practice on Sunday is going to be awesome. I feel that we're setting the table now to deliver two good practices before we go play the Celtics (on Tuesday) in our first game. We scrimmaged a lot, and I'm able to call timeouts and draw things and move people around. I feel comfortable that we're achieving the goals that we set out from the start of what we wanted to get done in Stockton."

When the buses pull out after that morning practice, they will stop at the entrance of the college en route to the Atlantic City Expressway. The scene boasts a beautiful display of landscaping, with many types of flowers. Don't be surprised if Brown gets out, snips a few and smells them the whole ride home.

@BobCooney76

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