Sixers' Brown remains upbeat

ON THE MORNING of games, NBA teams will hold about an hourlong shootaround to prepare for that night's contest. It is more to get the bodies moving than anything else, perhaps work up a little sweat and go over the different schemes that have been put in place for the game.

After a recent shootaround, before the last preseason game in Detroit, Brett Brown wandered over to the media gathered at the high school gym and couldn't contain himself. He excitedly talked about the current state of the organization, not an easy task when you looked at the talent on the court behind him. He was brutally honest in talking about the future and how far down the road the sunny skies are. He drifted back, as he often does, to how things were run during the mind-boggling success he experienced during his 12 years with the San Antonio Spurs, his voice rising as one story drifted to another.

Brown enjoys his morning coffee, sometimes four or five cups. Perhaps that's part of the reason for his always-energetic presence, but a very small part. He is a man on a mission. A mission he says he believes in and is on board with. His world isn't blessed with some of the most talented players, as it was with Tim Duncan and Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili and David Robinson in San Antonio. He is surrounded now not by world-class players, but mostly by a whole lot of non-athletic-looking people with pens and paper in hand, charting different aspects of the long practices Brown runs.

It's the analytics world that surrounds him now, a world that general manager Sam Hinkie believes is the best route to righting the organization after taking it to depths that few teams in the history of sports have seen.

Still, he "attacks every day." A 20-point loss the night before? "Time to get at it and get better." Injuries to key players that will keep them away for up to a year? "Find someone to fill in and maybe they'll become a player we like or somebody else does."

There is no downtime with him. In a hallway at AT&T Center in San Antonio last year, Tony Parker sprinted to greet Brown before a game. Knowing that his former boss, Gregg Popovich, has a tendency to sit his star players in winnable games, Brown's first words were, "Don't you sit out tonight. I want you playing as hard as you can against us. Don't you let up at all. Our players need to see what Tony Parker is about. I didn't coach you all those years to sit."

Parker laughed as he gave Brown a bearhug. His first question was an innocent, "How you doing?"

That also set Brown off.

"Don't you feel sorry for me, we're fine,'' Brown said. "We are going to play hard everyday, get better everyday and attack the day."

Parker laughed. He had seen that energy for years and knew there would be no change in Brown's demeanor. "He is the best," Parker said. "Philadelphia better know how lucky it is to have him."

For all his exuberance and need to get the work done everyday, there is also a patience in Brown. There has to be when the program he is running is so far away from even competing on a daily basis, let alone winning.

He was the key piece in player development during his time in San Antonio, grooming such players as Bruce Bowen, Steve Kerr and Kawhi Leonard, and many others. He is the right coach for this organization now, and it only seems right that once the talent is in place - Michael Carter-Williams, Nerlens Noel, Joel Embiid, Dario Saric - that he be able to see it through. Whether that happens or not, who knows? He has 2 years remaining on his contract after this one. Saric won't be here for another 2 years, at least, and Embiid probably won't join the fray until next season.

For now, it's full speed ahead, even though a bunch of the cars he's riding aren't of the luxury model. He'll send out a lineup tonight in the season opener in Indianapolis that will be unfamiliar to many. He'll be a heavy underdog in just about all 82 games. And he'll endure, move ahead and "fight everyday."

That's what he knows. That's what kept the team together during a 26-game losing streak last season and a 19-win season. His players buy into it because they know he is true to his word.

"They are fun to coach," he said of this year's squad, as it is set now. "I think they'll be fun for the fans because there are some elite athletes that played their tails off and are trying to do the right thing defensively. There's a wild side that scares you as a coach but fans might think is quite exciting to come see that."

He was then asked about this season being more of a development year than looking for wins: "This season and a few more."