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These are the times that try Sixers coach Brett Brown's soul

THE LOOK was a little more frazzled than normal, the hair more mussed. Brett Brown met the media before Friday's contest with the Miami Heat and he looked as though he had already seen Dwyane Wade throw in 30 points (Wade scored 21 without playing the fourth quarter in a 112-102 Miami win).

Sixers head coach Brett Brown.
Sixers head coach Brett Brown.Read more(Yong Kim/Staff Photographer)

THE LOOK was a little more frazzled than normal, the hair more mussed. Brett Brown met the media before Friday's contest with the Miami Heat and he looked as though he had already seen Dwyane Wade throw in 30 points (Wade scored 21 without playing the fourth quarter in a 112-102 Miami win).

That is where Brown is: sometimes bordering on insanity, most times hiding it with an enormous amount of inexplicable optimism for a team that fell to 8-54 with the loss.

Lately, the former seems to be outweighing the latter, and with good reason. Friday, he was informed before the game that the two big men he is trying to mesh were going to be sidelined. Jahlil Okafor missed his third consecutive game with a bruised shin and Nerlens Noel sat as he is bothered by a sore knee, which struck the floor in Wednesday's loss to the Charlotte Hornets. Add to that the fact that Nik Stauskas and Kendall Marshall weren't even in the Wells Fargo Center, as they were dealing with upper-respiratory infections, and T.J. McConnell (shin) and Hollis Thompson (sickness) were on minute restrictions.

So where did Brown have to turn for help? Partly to 36-year-old Elton Brand, who made his first appearance of the season, and undrafted Christian Wood, called up earlier in the day from the team's NBA Development League affiliate Delaware 87ers.

Talk about bringing a slingshot to a gunfight.

Not normally, but there are times when the head coach who has accumulated 181 losses in the 226 games that he has coached here just looks the part of burden carrier. Friday was one of those. The game had all the feel of a "what's the point?" contest.

"So you go play with what you have and you look forward to it," was the line Brown forced out.

Really, there is nothing left in this season to look forward to, and there's no masking it. It doesn't appear that Okafor and Noel will find some magic elixer that will turn the two of them into anything closely resembling a formidable duo.

Ish Smith appears to be pretty worn down and revealing himself to be more the player who has been shuffled all over the league instead of the point guard of the future.

Stauskas is finding nagging injuries and sickness more than he does a shooting groove, and mostly everyone else fits into the "they are what they are" category.

So to help keep Brown sane, the team throws him a bit of a bone by sending player development assistant Chris Babcock over to Turkey to watch Dario Saric play three games. Babcock flew from Istanbul to New York, then climbed into a car Friday afternoon to report his observations to Brown.

Whatever sense the severely jet-lagged Babcock could make sounded good to Brown. It had to, after being forced to start little-used Carl Landry at center against the Heat and give Brand his first minutes of the season.

"I do see daylight," Brown said. "I am excited about, potentially, four first-round draft picks. I like seing Joel (Embiid) out there (working out). I like seeing Saric. We do have cap space. We are in the market for free agents. You weigh all that up (and) it gets me through this season and each night just fine.

"He's got that competitive bull in the china shop play. I think the city of Philadelphia is just going to love the physicality of him. I think we all have to be reminded that he hasn't played a second of NBA basketball, as good as I think he might be. But nobody is every going to question his heart or his toughness and he just comes with a size and a skill package at that big of a position where he could play a 'three' or a 'four.' He can dribble. He can pass. He's working on his shot. We feel that he is getting better. That was the report that came back."

Brown went on to say that he had a "gut feel" that Saric will come over to play here next season, despite still being under contract with his Turkish team, Anadolu Efes. Brown acknowledged it would make no monetary sense for Saric, who would be able to sign a much more lucrative contract with the Sixers before the 2017-18 season, when his rookie contract expires and the salary cap will be higher then.

As recently as this offseason, Brown said that regretting his decision to come to the Sixers never crossed his mind and that he'd do it "10 times over again." But in the past few weeks, he has acknowledged that thoughts of his days in San Antonio, where he was part of four NBA championships, have crept into his thinking.

That is perfectly natural. As is the thinking of many fans who want Brown fired. And the many who think he deserves a shot at coaching NBA talent. It is just the whole mess of it all right now, and one that will remain through the final 20 games, in which the big talk will be whether the team can win two more games to secure not having the worst record in NBA history.

Then the light shines a little brighter with what may be. For now, however, it's just playing out the schedule. With black clouds everywhere.

cooneyb@phillynews.com

@BobCooney76

Blog: philly.com/Sixersblog