Sixers' season comes to a merciful close
The Sixers can look forward to a high draft choice, but it likely will be their only first-round pick when once they were looking at four.
THERE ARE two teams Brett Brown coaches during the basketball season. One is the 76ers, the other is the AAU team of his 10-year-old, Sam.
No doubt, Brown rather would have been with the 10-year-olds last night instead of overseeing the Sixers' 105-101 loss to the visiting Miami Heat. Only because coaching a game in which it is beneficial for his team to lose is harder to swallow than the two seasons he's gone through here in Philly. Here's why:
The Sixers needed to lose to the Heat and have Brooklyn lose to Orlando to get Miami's first-round pick, which was top-10 protected. Neither happened.
The Sixers needed to lose to the Heat and have Brooklyn lose to Orlando to increase their chances of getting Miami's first-round draft pick, which is top-10 protected. But Brooklyn won, and so the Heat is alone with the 10th-worst record in the NBA. That means the Sixers will get Miami's pick only if one of the teams slotted 11 through 14 jumps ahead of the Heat in the lottery, which will be May 19. The Sixers currently have a 9.1 percent of getting Miami's pick.
Meanwhile, if New York had won, the Sixers and Knicks would have tied for the second-worst record in the league. But the Knicks got plastered by Detroit, so the Sixers sit at No. 3 with a 15.6 percent chance of getting the top pick in the lottery.
Also, the pick the Sixers acquired from the Lakers, which was top-5 protected, likely will not arrive this year. LA finished with the fourth-worst record, and two teams would have to jump past the Lakers in the lottery.
And finally, a top-18 protected pick from Oklahoma City, will carry over to next year.
So, where it once seemed as if the Sixers could have four first-round picks in June, it now seems as though they likely will have only their own.
But all that was secondary to Brown.
"I just try to avoid everything and go coach the guys," Brown said before the Sixers' season ended at 18-64. "That's all I know. And that's been going on for a while. You go out there on the court, and I'll take the people that are healthy and then coach them up and try to put them in a position where they can play well."
Brown said all that with complete knowledge of the implications that awaited last night's finale. Both teams scaled back their rosters, each dressing only eight players.
The wear and tear of another grueling season seemed to finally overtake Brown on the last night. The sour taste of last year, when the team finished 19-63, certainly wasn't cleansed this season; if anything, it was heightened. But Brown is ready to wipe it clean and get the ship solidly built and put in the water.
"There is. There is, candidly," Brown, speaking pregame, said of the relief he feels for the end of the season. "I look forward to moving in a different direction. I look forward to setting the stage over the summer, and we've had candid conversations, direct conversations with everybody in that locker room about the expectations and how we can help them. We all know that the summertime is where people improve - physically and skillwise. We don't know the landscape of our team. Draft night and different things will let all that unfold with [general manager Sam Hinkie]. But I look forward to starting a new chapter, summer development, and I'm personally looking forward to tonight being over with and beginning a new phase."
It doesn't get any more candid than that. Brown knew this would be another season of "taking hits" as the losses piled up and he oversaw a ton of players auditioning for jobs in the league. Still, his patience, especially right now, seems to be running thin.
"For me, this was a hard year," he said. "To lose 2 years in a row like we did, I would not be telling the truth that it wasn't hard. I feel that the stuff that has gone on all around, I'm just thrilled with. I try to remind myself all the time to not get tricked. Really, the won-loss record is probably, in a list of what's most important, not in the top 10 if you're really trying to build a program."
So when does the winning become a high priority?
"Next year, without a doubt," Brown said. "For me, it does. It's very hard. When I give you that answer, no one here can misinterpret what I'm saying. We need to see that we're moving forward. Now how do you quantify that with a number of wins? I'm not prepared to give that answer.
"At the end of the day, to coach gypsies, to be able to have to coach a revolving door, that's not what I'm looking for. I think that the program understands - that Sam understands, that Josh understands - that we need a level of consistency to move it forward. That doesn't mean that we have to be pregnant with average players. We're looking for people that can move the program forward in a big way."
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