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Sixers coach Brett Brown needs the break

IF THERE'S anyone who needs a bit of a vacation, it is 76ers coach Brett Brown. His hair has become a little more silver since training camp began on Sept. 29 and his patience almost ran dry after the team started with one win in its first 31 games.

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

IF THERE'S anyone who needs a bit of a vacation, it is 76ers coach Brett Brown. His hair has become a little more silver since training camp began on Sept. 29 and his patience almost ran dry after the team started with one win in its first 31 games.

After losing a 19-point lead, and ultimately the game, 98-92 in overtime to the Los Angeles Clippers Monday, the team will host Sacramento on Wednesday then part ways for the All-Star break before resuming play on Friday, Feb. 19. Brown calls it the final third of the season, the first two-thirds being broken up from Opening Day to Christmas and Christmas to the All-Star break. The first third almost broke the coach. The second third, with the acquisition of Ish Smith and better overall play, revitalized him. A contract extension just before the holidays certainly didn't hurt his frame of mind, either.

To totally grasp the difficulty Brown has endured is almost incomprehensible, especially considering in 12 years as an assistant in San Antonio he went to the NBA Finals five times, coming away a winner all but once. The problems that will await him after the break will still be plentiful, such as how will Jahlil Okafor and Nerlens Noel ever coexist; can Nik Stauskas develop into a productive starting two guard; and how hard will it be to balance trying to win games as opposed to developing players?

The Clippers' Doc Rivers is coaching his 17th consecutive season in the league. He has been part of rebuilds. He has lost big, such as in 2006-07 with Boston when his team went 24-58. He also oversaw an NBA championship, which came the next season with the Celtics after an offseason trade brought in Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to join Paul Pierce. Rivers has experienced just about everything the NBA has to offer a coach, but nothing like what Brown has been through.

"Brett, he's a terrific coach," said Rivers, whose team improved to 35-18. "I say it all the time and this is a great example: I think people make mistakes when they judge you by your record. His teams play hard every night. Yet, every day they hear about themselves being traded, about what the team's not doing, about the draft the following year. To get your guys to execute and play hard and want to play for your team, is, to me, masterful. I don't know how he does it. It's hard to do. It really is. On top of that, with all young guys. I don't think people understand how hard it is to coach a bunch of young guys. Not because they don't know how to play. Some do. None of them want to play together, though."

There is no indication from either party that Noel and Okafor don't want to play together. And for the first five minutes of the game on Monday, they appeared to be doing it rather well as the Sixers built a five-point lead before Noel was pulled.

Brown juggled the two all evening. He got a great performance from Jerami Grant, who collected 17 points and 11 rebounds, and a solid 16 points off the bench from Hollis Thompson. Those are two players who have to be looked at moving forward.

But he also agonized as his team blew the big lead, missed 10 straight shots down the stretch and scored a total of 33 points over the last 29 minutes in falling to 8-44.

So the Sixers' coach will take some time away from the team for a few days by coaching his son Sam's team and by taking in a Bruce Springsteen concert on Friday. Undoubtedly he'll talk with his many resources both in and out of the league to try to better understand some of the puzzle pieces that will await him when the team reconvenes. Then the struggles will start anew.

"It's just gut feel, and I feel it's a really good time for us," Brown said of the timing of this year's break. "We are playing hard. We are most definitely together and we're very spirited. We have taken some hits, we've had some good performances. The buzzword flying around is to make sure that we're highly, highly competitive in our last two games here at home (before the break). This is my 15th year in the league and I have never experienced something leading up to the All-Star break where we've been at home a lot. We took a real hit in January (with travel). We've been home frequently lately and now this is the longest I've ever had off. I think our young guys don't know that. It's a good time to end this middle third on a high note."

He tried to muddle through the season without a legitimate starting point guard for the first third, and with a prized rookie, Okafor, who has been battling the normal rookie fatigue.

"I have," Brown said when asked if he's noticed Okafor hitting that proverbial wall. "I think it's just you get sick and you don't even know it. It sort of creeps in and it's just there and it doesn't maybe rear its head for a whole game, maybe it's just for a period or a chunk of time. I most definitely see it in Jahlil. We talk about it. He can't beat himself up when he's not performing to the level that either others or himself expects. I go right to him running. When I see him running, in this order, one way on defense and running the other way on offense, I want to play him a lot. Whenever I see him get slow either way, I think he's tired, and so I sit him. That's the judgement that I have to make. Obviously matchups factor into that as well."

It's the time of year when everyone is tired, filled with bumps, bruises and sprains, and anxious to get away for mental and physical rest, particularly the coach. And when he comes back, that Okafor-Noel tandem will still be the biggest puzzle to piece together.

"I think it's a hard problem because they are both very talented, they both have a bright future," Rivers said. "With Okafor, with the way he shoots, eventually I think that might not be a problem. It may be a good problem. But early on I think that would be a very difficult problem because they are both so used to playing around the basket."

Yeah. Time for a break.

cooneyb@phillynews.com

On Twitter: @BobCooney76

Blog: philly.com/Sixersblog